Aaron Copland And John Cage: Classical Music Analysis

Classical music made its debuted to the world stage around the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and North America. The compositions of Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven embody the skill and talent that comes with this genre. Yet, while their bodies have decayed their music has not. The reason for this, is that their works have been canonized as being significant or worthy to escape the boundaries of time. Through analysis of primary and secondary documents we will see how this canon process emerged, as well as how aspiring composers either conformed or opposed to this tradition.

Initially, musicians were expected to create their own music for the sake of their audience’s enjoyment, whether public concert goers or their patrons. Though, around this

Aaron Copland and John Cage represent this new era of artists that seemed to have challenging beliefs to this tradition that has been established. John Cage believed in something he called, the “simple style” which was an attempt for the symphonies to be more approachable to the general public (Michaels 2018). This is not to say, Copland completely abolished the tradition, but rather broadened it. In the generations of Beethoven and even Brahms, the music was inconceivably complex. In turn, could have discouraged people from taking the arduous mission to try to understand it. With this more simple approach, the music would be more approachable, yet still retaining value. John Cage, on the other hand, had a strong distaste for this fixation on the canon and the works of the of deceased. Cage, in his own words enumerated this, “and I rather think that contemporary music would be there in the dark too, bumping into things, knocking others over and in general adding to the disorder that characterized life…(Cage 46). Cage believed that focusing on past styles would be irrelevant to the present. To emphasize, those music styles fit in the past because it was relevant then, but the world has changed a lot since then. In essence, the music they (Copland and Cage) seemed to create appeared to emerge from their opposition to this tradition known as the musical canon. The focus began to shift, to not only try to appease a broader audience, but to create music that was pertinent to the issues facing the world at the