John Cage - Oh, How We Love You

This year I'm teaching an Art Club for 5 & 6 year old children.

I absolutely love John Cage...

and so I chose him as the focus of our first two Art Club sessions!

Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage
by Lisa Jean Rogers

In the past, we've often learned about John Cage in Philosophy:

Is It Music?
Jan 1, 2024

What Is Music?
Oct 12, 2016

My favorite quote ever from doing that lesson with children:
"That music lacked music."

If you're unfamiliar with 4'33" here is an NPR article:

The Story Of '4'33"'
https://www.npr.org/2000/05/08/1073885/4-33

A quote from this article:

For the second, the provisionally entitled "Four Pieces," Tudor starts a stopwatch, sits down in front of the piano, closes the lid and begins a performance in which he never plays a note.

After 30 seconds of silence, Tudor resets the stopwatch and times another two minutes, 23 seconds of silence, then another one minute, 40 seconds of silence. But is it silence? ....

The silent composition, which became known by its duration of four minutes and 33 seconds, was influenced by Cage's encounter with the so-called "white paintings" by his friend Robert Rauschenberg — huge canvasses of undifferentiated white whose surfaces vary infinitely with particles of dust and light reflections.

Nothing: John Cage and 4'33"
by Nicholas Day

John Cage was in the news during COVID:

A 639-Year Concert, With No Intermission for Coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/arts/music/john-cage-as-slow-as-possible-germany.html

The long, slow performance of a piece by the American composer John Cage is scheduled to run until 2640. On Saturday, an audience in Germany heard a sound change — the first since 2013.

John Cage has come up in our Art History studies of Sister Mary Corita Kent, Yves Klein, and Yoko Ono. His book with Lois Long, Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes, is also featured in my list of Books in ALL CAPS.

Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes
by John Cage & Lois Long

We will also probably spend some time on John Cage when we do Inventors and the Slinky! In 1959, John Cage composed an avant garde work called "Sounds of Venice" scored for (among other things) a piano, a slab of marble and Venetian broom, a birdcage of canaries, and an amplified Slinky.

But on to my notes from Art Club:

Fri Sep 25 - introduction to mark making / graphic notation

read Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage by Lisa Jean Rogers

pass out large sheets of paper and colored pencils

make sounds and have the children create marks which go with them (shake water bottle, stamp feet, tap pencil, sweep broom)

look at examples of birdsongs in graphic notation

have each person sing one of the birdsongs
can we figure out which one they're singing?

have each person sing a wordless song of their choice
while we draw the colors & marks that go with their voice

set out a selection of musical instruments

demonstrate the sound made by each

have each person draw a set of colorful marks
then choose instruments and perform their "piece"

take a Nature walk and listen for birdsongs



this page is from a vintage children's encyclopedia

Fri Oct 2 - tactile exploration / sensory play

read Nothing: John Cage and 4'33" by Nicholas Day

sit on a yoga mat in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds
what did you hear?

add drops of food coloring to water and watch it swirl around

read Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes by John Cage

go outside to the mud kitchen to mix up recipes!
to the mud we added our colored water and some seashells

I did a whole blog post on Fun Things We Add to the Mud Kitchen. I find that colored water is such a simple addition and a surprisingly big hit with kids!

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