But, Cage's father was an inventor and maintained the scientific detachment necessary to do that type of work. That was in Cage's soul...hardwired. His Daddy's influence would color every thought he would ever have. Had Cage gone one step farther with it would have appeared, in his personality, as icy...but he didn't, and it gave him the detachment necessary to look at music, from Gregorian Chant until 1952, and decide that it was time to pull the temple down on all of us...and he did.
John Cage's Father
Cage was the Samson that essentially ended Western Music and set the stage for the pluralistic world music that is currently in vogue.
So, I watched him closely as he listened to this piece. The slightest EMDR twitch in his face, and I knew he didn't like it...Uh oh.
Finally, I showed him Freight Door Charlie, a hysterically fast fusion piece that used not just intervallic phrases, but four actual 12 tone rows. Cage, being Schoenberg's student, could hear it!
I saw the smile that even his father-bred detachment could not restrain...
Cage and Schoenberg had had it out one day when the second greatest musical genius of the 20th century (Schoenberg) attacked the greatest musical genius of the 20th century (Cage) after examining a piano exercise of Cage's and saying " If you have no feel for harmony then you will bang your head against the wall, all your life," to which Cage replied, curtly, "Then I will devote myself to banging my head against that wall"...which he certainly did.
"War between Titans"