Born 5 September 1912 in Los Angeles, died 12 August 1992 in  New York. The son of an inventor, Cage briefly attended Pomona  College and then travelled in Europe for a time. Returning to  the United States in 1931, he studied music with Richard Buhlig,  Arnold Schoenberg, Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell. While  teaching in Seattle (1938–40), Cage organised percussion ensembles to perform his compositions. He also experimented with  works for dance, and his subsequent cooperations with the choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham sparked a long creative  and romantic partnership.

Cage’s early compositions were written in the 12-tone method of  his teacher Schoenberg, but by 1939 he had begun to experiment with increasingly unorthodox instruments such as the “prepared  piano” (a piano modified by objects placed between its strings  in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects).  Cage also experimented with tape recorders, record players, and  radios in his effort to step outside the bounds of conventional  Western music and its concepts of meaningful sound. The concert he gave with his percussion ensemble at the Museum of  Modern Art in New York City in 1943 marked the first step in  his emergence as a leader of the American musical avant-garde. In the following years, Cage turned to Zen Buddhism and other  Eastern philosophies and concluded that all the activities that  make up music must be seen as part of a single natural process. He  came to regard all kinds of sounds as potentially musical, and he  encouraged audiences to take note of all sonic phenomena, rather  than only those elements selected by a composer. To this end he  cultivated the principle of indeterminism in his music. He used  a number of devices to ensure randomness and thus eliminate any  element of personal taste on the part of the performer: unspecified instruments and numbers of performers, freedom of duration  of sounds and entire pieces, inexact notation, and sequences of  events determined by random means such as by consultation with  the Chinese Yijing (I Ching). In his later works he extended these  freedoms over other media, so that a performance of HPSCHD  (completed 1969) might include a light show, slide projections,  and costumed performers, as well as the seven harpsichord soloists and 51 tape machines for which it was scored.

Among Cage’s best-known works are 4’33’’ (Four Minutes and  Thirty-three Seconds, 1952), a piece in which the performer or  performers remain utterly silent onstage for that amount of time  (although the amount of time is left to the determination of  the performer); Imaginary Landscape no. 4 (1951), for 12 randomly tuned radios, 24 performers, and conductor; the Sonatas  and Interludes (1946–48) for prepared piano; Fontana Mix (1958),  a piece based on a series of programmed transparent cards that,  when superimposed, give a graph for the random selection of  electronic sounds; Cheap Imitation (1969), an “impression”  of the music of Erik Satie; and Roaratorio (1979), an electronic  composition utilizing thousands of words found in James Joyce’s  novel Finnegans Wake.

Cage published several books, including Silence: Lectures and  Writings (1961) and M: Writings ’67–’72 (1973). His influence  extended to such established composers as Earle Brown, Lejaren  Hiller, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. More broadly, his  work was recognised as significant in the development of traditions ranging from minimalist and electronic music to performance art.

Selected works: Greek Ode for voice and piano (1932), Three  Easy Pieces for piano (1933), Sonata for Clarinet (1933), Three  Pieces for two flutes (1935), Trio for three percussionists (1936), Metamorphosis for piano (1938), Five Songs for contralto soloist and piano (1938), Second Construction for four percussionists (1940), Third Construction for four percussionists (1941),  Dance to the West for piano (1942), Totem Ancestor for prepared  piano (1942), Primitive for prepared piano (1942), Ad Lib for  piano (1943), Triple-Paced No. 1 for piano (1943), Four Walls  for piano and voice (1944), Prelude for Meditation for prepared  piano (1944), Root of an Unfocus for prepared piano (1944),  Spontaneous Earth for prepared piano (1944), A Book of Music  for two prepared pianos (1944), Mysterious Adventure for prepared piano (1945), Ophelia for piano (1945), Two Pieces for  piano (1946), Nocturne for violin and piano (1947), Dream  for piano / viola and ensemble of 4 violas (1948), In a Landscape for piano / harp (1948), A Flower for voice and closed  piano (1950), Six Melodies for violin and keyboard instrument  (1950), Waiting for piano (1952), Two Pastorales for piano / prepared piano (1952), Water Music for pianist using various objects  (1952), Music for Piano 1 for piano (1952), Music for Piano 2  for piano (1953), Music for Piano 3 for piano (1953), Music for  Piano 20 for piano (1953), Speech 1955 for news reader and  5 radios (1955), Winter Music for piano (1957), Music Walk for  piano and various objects (1958), TV Köln for piano, optionally  with other objects (1958), Fontana Mix for tape (1958), Aria for  voice (1958), Water Walk, a work for a TV show, for one performer with a variety of objects (1959), Cartridge Music for amplified sounds (1960), Solo for Voice 2 for solo voice / chorus (1960),  Theatre Piece for 1–8 performers (1960), Music for Piano 85 for  piano and electronics (1962), Rozart Mix, tape loops (1965),  Cheap Imitation for piano (1969), WGBH-TV for composer and  technicians (1971), Bird Cage for 12 tapes (1972), Branches for  percussion made of plants or plants used as percussion (1976),  Some of the “Harmony of Maine” for organist and three assistants  (1978), Etudes Boreales for cello and/or piano (1978), Litany  for the Whale for two voices (1980), Postcard from Heaven for  1–20 harps (1982), An Alphabet, radio play (1982), Souvenir  for organ (1983), Thirty Pieces for String Quartet (1983), Perpetual Tango for piano (1984), Nowth upon Nacht for voice and  piano (1984), A Collection of Rocks for choir and orchestra (1984),  ASLSP for piano / organ (1985), Wishing Well for four speakers  (1986), Rocks for various electronic devices (1986), Haikai for  gamelan ensemble (1986), Two for flute and piano (1987), One  for piano (1987), Five for any five instruments or voices (1988),  Seven for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola and cello  (1988), 101 for orchestra (1988), Four for string quartet (1989),  Three for three recorders (1989), Sports: Swinging, after Satie for  piano (1989), One for drummer (1990), One for piano (1990),  One for violin (1990), Four for SATB choir (1990), 108 for  orchestra (1991), Eight for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn,  trumpet, tenor trombone and tuba (1991), Lullaby for musical  box (1991), One for shō (1991), Six for six percussionists with unspecified instruments (1991), 103 for orchestra (1991), Four for  percussionists with unspecified instruments (1991), Four for four  saxophones (1991), Five for trombone and string quartet (1991),  Five for soprano saxophone, alto saxophone and 3 percussionists (1991), Five for flute, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet and percussion  (1991), Five Hanau Silence for tape (1991), Twenty-Six for 26 violins (1991), Twenty-Eight for wind ensemble (1991), Twenty-Nine  for two timpani, two percussionists, piano and strings (1991),  Mozart Mix for five cassette players (1991), One for violin (1992),  Sixty-Eight for orchestra (1992),Eighty for orchestra (1992), Four  for four performers with any means of producing sounds (1992),  Seventy-Four for orchestra (1992), Fifty-Eightfor wind orchestra (1992), Two for violin and piano (1992), Muoyce II (Writing  through Ulysses) for speaker and tapes (1992), One for cinematographer (1992), One for lecturer (1992).