Introduction

John Milton Cage was born in Los Angeles on September 5, 1912, and died in New York City on August 12, 1992. He often mentioned his impressively named paternal grandfather, Gustavus Adolphus Williamson Cage, who took a first degree at CU-Boulder and did postgraduate work at the University of Denver. After that, Cage's grandfather became a dogmatic and rather intolerant minister in the Methodist Episcopalian Church, and he was apparently suspicious of music. Cage's father, an engineer and inventor who worked in various fields with limited success, was also named John Milton Cage (1886–1964), and his wife, Lucretia Harvey (1885–1968), was the pianist at the local church. Later, she took part in the activities of women's clubs and reported on them for the Los Angeles Times. Cage took up the story of his family background and his first musical influences and training through his aunts. Significantly, he came across the work of Gertrude Stein when he was at Pomona College—and subsequently became a dropout.

But Cage returned to academic institutions later. In 1948 and 1952 he taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina; in 1956 and 1959 he gave classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City; and he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1960 and again in 1970. He was composer in residence at the University of Cincinnati, was artist in residence at the University of California at Davis, was elected University of California Regents Lecturer at San Diego, and became Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1988–89. From the 1960s onward he increasingly received international commissions and awards, and his work in the visual arts was widely exhibited. This recognition moved to a climax with plans toward his eightieth birthday, which he did not live to see.

Interview

PD I’m interested in the background of musicians from their earliest times. Somehow it all fits. Your father was an inventor?

JC Right.

PD But on your mother's side there were professional musicians?

JC My mother's sisters were. My Aunt Phoebe was a singer, pianist, and piano teacher. Aunt Marge had a contralto voice.