“I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment.”

—  John Cage

1952, quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812
1950s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and …" by John Cage?
John Cage photo
John Cage 43
American avant-garde composer 1912–1992

Related quotes

Karlheinz Stockhausen photo

“New methods change the experience, and new experiences change man. Whenever we hear sounds, we are changed, we are no longer the same, and this is more the case when we hear organized sounds; music.”

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) German composer

http://www.ubu.com/film/stockhausen_tuning.html
Tuning In (1981) BBC documentary on Stockhausen.
Attributed

Diana Gabaldon photo

“Once you've chosen a man, don't try to change him', I wrote with more confidence. 'It can't be done. More important-don't let him try to change you.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Elijah Wood photo

“I won't change and my perspective won't change. I want to continue my life the way I live it, and I'm not going to let anything stop me from doing that. It isn't all about acting. There's a lot more to life than Hollywood.”

Elijah Wood (1981) American actor

Hello Magazine http://www.hellomagazine.com/profiles/elijah-wood/

John Cage photo

“They say, 'you mean it's just sounds?' thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless, whereas I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological. I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket or that it's president or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Interview in documentary "Listen" (1992)
1990s

“What I’m not changes more than what I am.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#91
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Rick Riordan photo

“The more you know, the more you try to change them, and that can be disastrous.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“The idea that beauty is revolution is a revelation to me. I once believed that the concept of the music was more important than the sound, that the politics of the notation was more important than the time limits of the rehersals and therefore, more important than the sound of the performance”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Cited (earlier) in: American Women Composers (1979) AWC news. Volumes 2-3. p. 41
Beauty is Revolution (1980)

Václav Havel photo

“What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: I am referring to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all power derives from the people. I am, in short, referring to the fundamental ideas of modern democracy.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.

Francis Crick photo

“Before I describe in more detail exactly what is involved in seeing, let me make three general remarks.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

Charles Lindbergh photo

“There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely.
Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Journal entry (11 December 1941); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)
Context: We talk about spreading democracy and freedom all over the world, but they are to us words rather than conditions. We haven't even got them here in America, and the farther we get into this war the farther we get away from democracy and freedom. Where is it leading us to, and when will it end? The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely.
Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.

Related topics