John Cage was born on 5 September 1912 in Los Angeles. The son of an inventor, he showed independence early: at twelve John was already presenting a programme on the radio station KNX, illustrating the talk with his own piano playing.
In 1928 Cage entered Pomona College, but two years later he left for Paris, where he drew a great deal, wrote poetry, composed music, and at the same time worked for an architect who collaborated with the Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp.
Returning to California in 1931, John worked as a cook and a gardener while beginning to study Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone music. In 1934, when Schoenberg moved to Los Angeles to escape Nazi persecution, Cage persuaded the composer to give him free composition lessons. The divergence in style and philosophy between teacher and pupil became apparent almost at once. Schoenberg understood this and gave Cage a peculiar assessment, calling him "not a composer but an inventor of genius". Cage was always flattered by that verdict.
In 1937 Cage moved for a time to Seattle. There he worked as an accompanist in the dance class of an arts school, where he met the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. The meeting became Cage's destiny. For the next 55 years Cage and Cunningham walked hand in hand in life and in art. Their personal and creative union later even earned the odd title of "the most beautiful homosexual union in the world". In the forties the Cage and Cunningham tandem toured the world under the name "We Believe in Ourselves".
Having settled in New York, Cage enrolled in Zen Buddhism courses at Columbia University, and these studies played an important part in the development of his creative individuality. The Eastern teaching on the role of chance in cosmic and human affairs made a deep impression on him. Among the significant works that resulted from this interest was "Imaginary Landscape No. 4" (1951), written for the broadcasts of twelve radios.
The culmination of Cage's period of experiment was the famous "4'33"" for piano (1952). Silence on stage for four minutes and thirty-three seconds creates a space in which any sonic event is possible: passing cars, a chance cough in the audience, the sound of one's own heartbeat. Naturally the audience did not know how to react and often booed Cage's piece in the most unceremonious way. Even now, after music theorists have explained to mere mortals what and how to perceive, what to think and what lies behind it all, this phenomenon of silence in music remains a riddle and at the same time the composer's outstanding discovery. That is where the inventor's genes showed!
Cage's brief marriage in the forties did not affect his relationship with Cunningham: until his death on 12 August 1992 he and Merce Cunningham lived together in New York.
A philosopher and composer, Cage was also a writer and left several books, among them "Silence" (1961), "A Year from Monday" (1967), "Empty Words" (1979), "Themes and Variations" (1982) and "X" (1983). John Cage not only founded an entirely new current in music, thereby influencing a whole generation of composers, but brought elements of his cosmogony into painting, dance and poetry. Any sound, according to his philosophy, is music. Thanks to Cage the whole world becomes music, and we, the listeners, once we have yielded to the charm of his inventions, will never again hear the world as it sounded before.