Episode 16 - John Cage & Zen: a chattering silence

Send us Fan MailIn this extended episode I explore some of the ideas and works of the American multi-disciplinary artist, John Cage – who was born in 1912 and died in 1992 – particularly noting parallels with the practice of zazen and mindful meditation. In 1950, Cage met D.T. Suzuki and began to learn from him about Zen. Cage was never a Zen practitioner, in the usual sense, but his understanding of Zen ideas, along with his study of Daoism and Vedanta philosophy, had an enormous impact on his work as composer, writer and artist. It was in 1950 that Cage began to use chance procedures as an important part of his compositional methods – particularly using the iChing, or Book of Changes, and dice, to determine many, if not all, aspects of his music – including duration, tonal values and ‘silences.’