This week on From The Vault we profile one of the great innovative thinkers and visionary geniuses of the 20th Century.... and the man who helped create the field of modern music: John Cage. Born in 1912, by the early 1930's John Cage would begin expanding the parameters of music first by developing a 25 note row writing technique, then by breaking away with traditional forms of harmony. Cage's professor at USC and UCLA from 1933-1935, the renowned composer Arnold Schoenberg, would recount that Cage was “not a composer, but an inventor of genius”. By the 1940's he began turning the music world upside down with his treated piano technique, in which he placed objects on the piano strings to create new sounds. John Cage's classic 1952 composition 4 Minutes 33 Seconds, which is 3 Movements of absolute silence would resonate as his signature innovation. As Cage's innovations grew, so did his notoriety. In fact the talk ABOUT his work grew larger than his performances. Cage would also begin to create “COMBINE ART” which would integrate art from other disciplines with his music such as his collaborations with dance innovator and lifelong partner Merce Cunningham, and painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. John Cage would also bring elements of Indian Philosophy and Zen Buddhist to his work. By 1951 Cage's work would become a meditation on “Chance”, as he used the I Ching to make decisions in his compositions and writing. We invited KPFK Los Angeles' Global Village music host and admirer of John Cage's life and work John Schneider to help us navigate through some of the remarkable Cage Recordings contained in the Pacifica Radio Archive including the only known recording of his 45 minutes for a Speaker performance. John Schneider will be performing Cage's 45 minutes for a speaker at the Pasadena Armory for the Arts On January 23, 2010 surrounded by 50 Robert Rauschenberg prints from the famous Los Angeles print workshop Gemini. Here is John Schneider Next John Schneider introduces The Pacifica Radio Archives' 1963 recording of “45 minutes for a Speaker” performance, which according to John is the only known recording of this in the world. John Schneider introduces The Pacifica Radio Archive's recording of John Cage speaking about his collaborations with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg recorded in 1965 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That was John Cage in 1965 reading from his 1961 book “Silence: Lectures and Writings” Next John Schneider talks about the significance of John Cage's late night conversations with Pacifica Station WBAI New York's host Morton Feldman from 1966. John Schneider/ John Cage and Morton Feldman 1966 John Cage and Morton Feldman from a 1966 conversation recorded on Pacifica Radio's New York Station WBAI.