lodies or harmonies, in fact Cage pushed the boundaries of traditional music by eliminating harmony in a lot of his Sonata’s. The Sonata personifies his interest in the rhythm of the piece then in harmony. This was one of the first revolutionary concepts. Cage had quickly discovered that “harmony was inhospitable to nonpitched sounds”(Page 86, 20/20). Another revolutionary concept initiated in the Sonata No 5 was the unusual timbres generated by the prepared piano. By adding nuts, bolts, screws and such metallic instruments to the piano Cage had created a new set of timbres. The timbres generated give you a feeling of the flow of water while others are metallic. In the Sonata we hear a wide range of timbres that can be produced by the prepared piano. They are a complex set of timbres some with unpitched thumps and hums. Although most of the sounds produced barely sound like a piano but sometimes we can hear a note here and there, which reveals to us the instrument. Then there was another new innovative concept, of using everyday noises. The “everyday noises” like the clunk, bang and pound which can be heard in Sonata No 5. The metallic noises produced by the prepared piano sound a lot like playing with metal instruments, which can be found in the kitchen, but in a lot of his other works he has used instruments, which are used in a normal household to produce new kinds of sounds. One of John Cage’s motives was to open our ears to the sounds of our surroundings. The greatest example was the 4’33’’, a silent piece, which was written for a piano. He wrote music but he left the style of performance on the performer. So that he would hear it being played in different styles. Cage in Sonata No 5 has also incorporated some of the conventional elements of music. An example of this would be ornamentation, although ornamentation involves making a note fancy. In this pie...
