Silence

by John Cage

The avant-garde composer’s collected writings.

Recommendations from our site

“John Cage is one of the composers most associated with minimalism. He’s a kind of pioneer, not just in music, but also for the arts, and for philosophy as well. In the 1940s and 1950s, he had already cultivated an interest in Zen philosophy. He experimented with these forms of emptiness in art that were very radical at the time.” Read more...

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Kyle Chayka, Art Historians, Critics & Curator

“Silence is one of the great music books. Purely on a literary level, there’s something about Cage’s style which is tremendously unique.” Read more...

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Alex Ross, Musicians, Music Critics & Scholar

The book, according to the author

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away.

John Cage