"Cage was dissatisfied with other composers’ reliance on “musical” sounds; he wondered about silence,..."

“Cage was dissatisfied with other composers’ reliance on “musical” sounds; he wondered about silence, and noises in the concert hall, and the sounds bodies make. (“45′ for a Speaker” contains numerous stage directions for the reader to undertake: “snore,” “hiss,” “slap table,” “cough.”) Cage composed for standard instruments, but he used them in novel ways: he’d insert nuts or bolts between piano strings, or deploy radios in performances, or give over the composition of his pieces entirely to...