{"id":737,"date":"2012-09-05T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2012\/09\/the-long-shadow-of-john-cage.html"},"modified":"2012-09-05T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T15:01:00","slug":"the-long-shadow-of-john-cage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2012\/09\/the-long-shadow-of-john-cage.html","title":{"rendered":"The Long Shadow of John Cage"},"content":{"rendered":"

ONE hundred years ago today, a child was born in Los Angeles who would go on to… well, what exactly was Cage’s impact anyway? I’ve been trying to figure that out since I studied experimental music at Wesleyan two decades ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n


<\/span>Whatever it is, part of what interests me about Cage is how his influence — ideas like indeterminacy, his reworking of certain Asian ideas including the Tao, prepared instruments that extended the innovations of Henry Cowell — reached outside classical or experimental music. He even inspired, albeit briefly, the Beatles.<\/span>

<\/span>In this story<\/a>, from Sunday’s LA Times, I speak to a wide range of artists, including Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields and Mac from Superchunk, about the composer’s long reach.<\/span>

<\/span>Here’s what performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, who knew Cage a bit in New York in the ’50s, told me about him:<\/span>

<\/span> <\/p>\n

His presence was peculiar \u2013 unlike anyone else\u2019s. He was always either smiling and laughing \u2013 or extremely serious. Nothing in between.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ONE hundred years ago today, a child was born in Los Angeles who would go on to… well, what exactly was Cage’s impact anyway? I’ve been trying to figure that out since I studied experimental music at Wesleyan two decades ago. Whatever it is, part of what interests me about Cage is how his influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70,121,54,78,30,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-art","7":"category-art-center","8":"category-classical-music","9":"category-experimental","10":"category-los-angeles","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}