American musician who decisively influenced the avant-garde of his time, John Cage (Los Angeles, 1912 – New York, 1992) studied with composers Henry Cowell and Adolph Weiss, as well as with the Austrian Arnold Schoenberg. Influenced by Zen, Cage often used silence in his scores as another element of musical language, giving sounds an entity dependent on time.

Chance sometimes became the central element in his works. In the 1930s, he began to demonstrate in his early pieces an unusual talent for designing impossible rhythms and a special aptitude for inventing systems such as the twenty-five-tone system. He also used distortions for his instruments and invented the prepared piano, into which he inserted a series of elements in the strings that endowed the instrument with a wide range of new sonic possibilities. Possibly the most innovative composition he wrote for this novel piano was Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948).

Cage also coined the concept of unintentional music. An example is 4'33» (1952), a work whose score contained no notes throughout its four minutes and thirty-three seconds duration. Its first performance was given by pianist David Tudor.

In addition to those mentioned, among its pieces, the following stand out Amores (1943) Music of Changes (1951) o Theatre Piece (1960) and, among his books, Silence (1961) Empty Words (1979) o X (1983). He also composed works for dance for the American choreographer Merce Cunningham and, in 1989, was awarded the Kyoto Prize by the Inamori Foundation.