Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition - Hardcover

John Cage is one of the most frequently misunderstood of modern artists. This book offers a new way of approaching Cage's work by exploring the similarities between a number of American experimental composers and literary figures.Christopher Shultis has observed an intriguing contrast between Cage's affinity for Henry David Thoreau and the connection between composer Charles Ives -- viewed here as Cage's "opposite" -- and Thoreau's contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although both have been called transcendentalists, Thoreau and Emerson held different views about the relationship between nature and humanity and the artist's role in creativity. Shultis explores these concepts as either "sounded" or "silenced" selves -- one which takes control of the creative experience versus one which seeks to coexist with it -- and shows how understanding this distinction allows a better understanding of Cage. He then extends the contrast found in Emerson and Thoreau to poetic distinctions between objective and projective verse. Silencing the Sounded Self offers provocative interpretations of Cage's aesthetic views, especially as they concern the issue of non-intention, and addresses some of his most perplexing music as well as several written works. By linking this twentieth-century genius to nineteenth-century roots, Shultis establishes Cage firmly within an American tradition of experimentalism that transcends disciplinary boundaries and connects some of the most innovative creative work of this century to the past.