University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 2016 From soprano to barking dog : John Cage, the avant garde, and the counterculture, 1940-1975 Heather M. McAlpine University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©2016 Heather M. McAlpine Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the Cultural History Commons Recommended Citation McAlpine, Heather M., "From soprano to barking dog : John Cage, the avant garde, and the counterculture, 1940-1975" (2016). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 306. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/306 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. FROM SOPRANO TO BARKING DOG: JOHN CAGE, THE AVANT GARDE, AND THE COUNTERCULTURE, 1940-1975 An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Heather M. McAlpine University of Northern Iowa July 2016 ABSTRACT John Cage’s compositions, representative of second generation avant-garde music, are an integral part of any discussion of the sixties, and his work complicates parts of the counterculture historiography. While the political ideology that drives Cage’s compositions fit many of the counterculture’s aims, it has not been included in the historiography in its own right. The evidence suggests instead that his ideas, and those of the new avant-garde of which he was a part, were actually a piece of a consistent tradition that extended into the counterculture.