With a foreword to 50th Anniversary Edition by Kyle Gann

Silence, A Year from Monday, M, Empty Words and X (in this order) form the five parts of a series of books in which Cage tries, as he says, « to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, is not about them, but which produces them. » Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching (what Cage called « writing through »).

John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: « Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant. » « He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It’s what’s happening now. » –The American Record Guide

« There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away. »

Foreword
Manifesto
The Future of Music: Credo
Experimental Music
Experimental Music: Doctrine
Composition as Process
Changes
Indeterminacy
Communication
Composition
To Describe the Composition Used in Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4
To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21-52
Forerunners of Modern Music
History of Experimental Music in the United States
Erik Satie
Edgard Varese
Four Statements on the Dance
Grace and Clarity
In This Day…
2 pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance
On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work
Lecture on Nothing
Lecture on Something
45′ for a speaker
Where Are We Going?
Indeterminancy
Music Lovers’ Field Companion