The long-lasting impact that Cage had on his students, many of which would go on to play central roles in the Fluxus movement, cannot be overstressed. But what was so special about Cage? What made his audience in Darmstadt so receptive to... more
The long-lasting impact that Cage had on his students, many of which would go on to play central roles in the Fluxus movement, cannot be overstressed. But what was so special about Cage? What made his audience in Darmstadt so receptive to his ideas? And where did composers go from there? My aim in this essay is to propose a response to those questions by zooming in on three years from about 1959 to 1962 during which a circle of key figures – among others electronic music pioneer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Korean musician and multimedia artist Nam June Paik and visual artist Mary Bauermeister – embarked on a short-lived, yet immensely influential quest for new creative expressions, that would transform the languages of art and music to come.
