Begin Again

Starred review from September 1, 2010

A Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize winner takes on one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.

John Cage (1912–1992) redefined what music could be by expanding nearly every element of the art. Silverman (Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse, 2003, etc.) traces his innovations chronologically—his breakthrough years as a composer of experimental dance and percussion music, his definitive decade inventing chance-derived music as a member of the New York School of artists and musicians in the '50s, and his later development of indeterminate music, the content of which could be created by the performer. Cage's originality and his subsequent influence spread far beyond music into the visual arts and poetry, playing a central role in the creation of the Fluxus movement as well as the Language school of poetry. Silverman's prose gracefully captures the seamlessness of Cage's effect on 20th-century creative art, and he provides a careful, but not uncritical, exploration of the composer's personal relationships, many of which involved men and women who would become monumental artists, scientists and thinkers. The author also explores other parts of Cage's life, including his interest in chess, which he learned to play from Marcel Duchamp, and his work as a mycologist. Silverman also provides a much-needed corrective to a generation of artists and musicians who have idolized, even mythologized Cage, yet grossly misunderstand or remain ignorant of what Cage actually accomplished as a composer. As someone who experimented quite dramatically with musical notation, instrumentation and the very nature of what sound could be—think of his famous "silent" piece, 4'33"—Cage occasionally mystified the very music he sought to simplify. Yet Silverman's artful narrative lays bare Cage's compositional processes, aesthetic posturing and the cross-cultural philosophical underpinnings to his work with a clarity that musicologists and art historians have yet to achieve.

Not just an exemplary biography, but a significant contribution to the cultural history of American music.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from September 1, 2010

In anticipation of the centenary in 2012 of John Cage's birth, award-winning biographer Silverman (Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse) has produced the first in-depth, detailed account of Cage's rich and colorful life. His numerous, passionate, and complex relationships with the leading minds of the American and European avant-garde artistic movements are carefully chronicled and, in toto, would convince any doubters that Cage should rightly be regarded as one of the most original and influential thinkers of the 20th century. Silverman's prose is lively and occasionally mirrors Cage's own wit. There are a few small illustrations of Cage's scores, including a page of his famous aria, and several textcentric, mesostic pieces. Compared with Kyle Gann's recent No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33", this book contains a much more complete view of Cage's entire life and works, though it doesn't delve as deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of his signature work. VERDICT This excellent, thoroughly researched biography is an essential purchase. Highly recommended. [See Q&A with Silverman, p. 110.]--Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2010
John Cage, whose pieces dazzled and confounded audiences for six decades, hardly seems the easiest of subjects for the biographer, but this is a well-researched, coherent, quite readable account of the composer and his work. What comes across is a man who was ferociously driven to create music and to promote it to those who could most effectively advance it. Cage was an iconoclast, yet he developed relationshipsoften symbioticwith some of the iconic artists of the past century, including Arnold Schoenberg, Jasper Johns, Marcel Duchamp, Buckminster Fuller, Pierre Boulez, Robert Rauschenberg, and longtime companion Merce Cunningham. What also comes across is a humanity and openness that served Cage well in his personal life and his work, personified in his advice to young percussion student Cunningham: You were playing everything absolutely perfectly. Now go a little further and make a few mistakes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)