Dallas Taylor

The audience had no idea what to think.

It made people wonder if Cage is even taking his career seriously.

A close friend even wrote to him, begging that he not turn his career into a joke.

John Cage had, well, if you could call it, composed a piece of music that really challenged some very established ideas about music composition.

It's something that musicians still debate today.

To understand just what John Cage was thinking, let's back up to the 1940s.

Back then, John Cage was making a name for himself composing for the prepared piano.

To make music like this, John Cage would put objects inside the piano, between the strings, things you just find lying around, like screws, tape, and rubber erasers.

So now you've transformed the piano from a tonal instrument with high and low pitches into a collection of unique sounds.

The music you're hearing is Cage's Sonata No.

5 from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, probably his most famous work outside of 433.

This version was performed by Boris Berman.

John Cage wrote incredibly detailed instructions about where to place each object in the piano, but it's impossible for every performer to get the exact same objects.

So the sound you get is always different.

Basically, it comes down to random chance.

This was pretty bananas and pretty alien to the way most composers and musicians are taught to do things.

John Cage was becoming increasingly interested in chance and randomness and letting the universe provide the answer to the question, what note should I play next?

But to hear the answer to the question, first, you have to listen.

And in the 1940s, listening to the universe was getting harder to do.

The Muzak company was founded in the 30s.