Each was a visionary who pushed music to a new level and irreversibly influenced all that followed. My candidate may not make many other lists. But its ultimate influence over the music of the future may come to tower over all of the more obvious choices. I knew John Cage only briefly when I was an undergrad at Wesleyan University, whose music department lauded him as a guiding genius while others disparaged him as a negligible buffoon. He was always happy and gentle, alive with awestruck wonder of the world, and especially fascinated by its sounds.
Most music is trivialized by attempts to describe it.
And that was it. While the performer makes as little sound as possible, Cage breaks traditional boundaries by shifting attention from the stage to the audience and even beyond the concert hall. You soon become aware of a huge amount of sound, ranging from the mundane to the profound, from the expected to the surprising, from the intimate to the cosmic shifting in seats, riffling programs to see what in the world is going on, breathing, the air conditioning, a creaking door, passing traffic, an airplane, ringing in your ears, a recaptured memory. Let's tackle a few obvious questions. But so are all artistic conventions.