ad no wings or orchestra pit, there was just barely enough room for a small grand piano built into the front left of the audience. Being so limited on space and not being able to neither find, nor fit an African twelve tone row, he invented the prepared piano. The prepared piano he created by adding screws, bolts, rubber, wood and weather striping between the strings of the grand piano. The piano was transformed into a percussion orchestra, with the loudness of that of a harpsichord. Cage later went on to earn awards for “Sonatas and Interludes” which was one of his most important works for the prepared piano in 1946 to 1948.Cage later went on to say “My favorite music is the music that I haven’t yet heard. I don’t here the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I have [not] yet heard.” This quote summarizes his philosophy on indeterminacy. This belief led to the creation of 4’33’’, his recording of the sounds around you. The only thing specified is the length of the piece. It is said that he used 4.33 minutes which equals 273 seconds. And –273 centigrade = zero degrees where everything would be completely silent and atoms quite moving. What do you think about this theory?Later John went on studying Zen Buddhism and the “I Ching” which is what steered him more so in the direction of indeterminacy. With this style he would orchestrate what was going on, but leave the conditions open to the performer. A good example is the piece he created by using 12 radios each and having 24 different people, two at each radio, one controlled the volume and the other the tuning. He would then randomly select which radios were playing when he told them. The undetermined condition here would be that he never knew what was playing on each station as he selected them to play, or the volume. And pieces were always overlapping each other with a variety of unk...
