“A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.”

—  John Cage

1955, quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812
1950s

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American avant-garde composer 1912–1992

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