incorporation. He then followed with another tactic, associated most not- ably with his composition 433", which entailed rejecting the importance of whether a musical sound was present or absent within a composition and, in the process, extending the field of artistic materiality to all the nonintentional sounds surrounding the performance—that is, by shifting the production of music from the site of utterance to that of audition. This musicalization was then extended to all sounds, inside and outside the per- formance space, since the ability and willingness to listen were the only requirements, and these abilities in turn were extended, with the aid of amplification and other technological devices, to small sounds and hitherto inaudible sounds. The latter move was associated with his famous visit to the anechoic chamber, where he heard the ever-present sounds of his body, the low sound of his blood circulating, and the high-pitched sound of his nervous system in operation. ‘This was a very important moment since it was here that all sound was joined to always sound. Fle went further still to rhetorically use the promise of technology to extend all sound and akoays sound outside the operations of his body to hear the vibrations of matter. ‘Thus, sound was no longer tied to events but existed as a continuous state as it resonated from each and every atom. This certainly tipped the balance of the senses the other way since where one might expect night to remove light and give vision a rest, aurality would still exist. Everything always made a sound, and everything could be heard; all sound and always sound paralleled panavrality. and to simple speculation. Chapter 6 attempts to answer the question: how was Cagean silence generated? The chapter is based on an examination of Cage’ first proposal for a silent composition entitled Silent Prayer (1948) and not the normal jumping off point, #’33", composed four years later. Unpacking his proposal reveals a different Cage than the one to whom we have grown accustomed. Some may take this as a critique of Cage, whereas I would argue that he merely begins to look like someone of his time.expanding domain of music. The emancipatory drive coupled with the mu- sical silencing of the social would eventually lead to his hopes for a new aurality out of the practical world of sound and into the realm of myth, out of the quotidian experience of hearing and into a world of the impossible inaudible. He began by liberating small sounds and then, on the wings of technological promise, smaller and smaller sounds until all matter became sonorous and musical. Once in the realm of myth, histories of music are of limited value. We must resort instead to a long-standing tradition of impossible sounds, voices, and aurality within Western culture. The last section of chapter 6 discusses how the generation of Cagean panaurality based in small sounds and technology moved into the realm of impossibil- ity, and then chapter 7 places his impossible inaudible in a schematic of mythological inheritance, from antiquity to the present day. In negotiating his new world of sound, Cage replaced the opposition of sound and silence with a gradient of all sound extending from small sounds to loud sounds. However, Cage’s modernist enthusiasm for discov- ery and emancipation within this totality could not be played out evenly over this expanse of sound, as if over the reach of a keyboard. He believed he could approach them equitably—in effect, democratically hearing sounds in freedom by listening to each in themselves. Instead, he unwittingly en- countered an imbalance, an asymmetry between small sounds and loud sounds, with the latter fitting awkwardly into his overall thought. In chap- ter 8 Cage’s disposition toward small and loud sounds is contrasted to prac- tices of a younger generation of artists during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his awkwardness becomes their opportunity. | 6 | JOHN CAGE: SILENCE AND SILENCING