396 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
Many younger Americans took Cage’s
example as a jumping-off point for work
of their own. Cage’s charisma as a lec-
turer and raconteur, as well as the visual
beauty of his scores, which are master-
works of calligraphy, also enhanced his
reputation. Silence (1961), the fi rst of sev-
eral compilations of Cage’s lectures and
writings, established him as a signifi cant
writer on music; winning a wide reader-
ship, it has remained in print to this day.
Cage’s composing philosophy, which
replaces intellectual analysis and the pur-
suit of one’s desires with “purposeless
play,” offers a radical prescription for emp-
tying the mind, in contrast to academic
instruction and the Western musical tra-
dition itself, which both strive to fi ll it. On the strength of that doctrine of libera-
tion, Cage is often proclaimed a key fi gure in twentieth-century music. By the time
of his death in 1992, Cage’s infl uence was apparent not only in classical music but
also in performance art and the more intellectual currents of popular music.JAZZ IN THE POSTWAR YEARS
If classical composition after World War II continued to win critical respect while
its popular appeal shrank, a similar though less drastic process was also at work
in postwar jazz. Although rooted in blues and gospel, jazz attracted musicians
who pushed the boundaries of technique and expression, earning the attention
of critics while challenging the lay listener. Modern pioneers such as Charlie
Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were received from the start as virtuosos who were
saying something new, in an idiom called bebop, which extended the music’s
vocabulary without losing its swinging rhythm and blues infl ections. Histori-
cally minded critics placed the new music in a lineage starting in New Orleans
and continuing in Chicago, New York, and Kansas City, leading into the big-band
music of the Swing Era, which in turn begat bebop. Bebop marked the fi rst phase
of the jazz of the postwar period: modern jazz.CHARLIE PARKER AND BEBOP
Charlie Parker, born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1920, was a musician whose
rhythmic originality, harmonic complexity, virtuoso technique, and inventive-
ness as an improviser helped to bring about changes in style that roused the
disapproval of much of the popular music audience. Parker’s alto saxophone
playing was geared not to the tastes of swing-band fans but to a musical logic of
his own, a logic with intense appeal for a small coterie of listeners. Parker seized
an artistic freedom that few earlier jazz musicians had enjoyed, but that freedom
imposed a burden: how to survive as a popular artist who played music that only
a fraction of the jazz audience was ready to accept.John Cage Explains Why He Writes
Music (1957)A
nd what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of
course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with
sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a
purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play,
however, is an affi rmation of life—not an attempt to bring
order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation,
but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living,
which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s
desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.In their own words
modern jazz172028_16_386-411_r3_sd.indd 396 23/01/13 10:56 AM