Silence: Lectures and Writings is a book by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 experimental composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 (1912–1992), first published in 1961 by Wesleyan University Press

Wesleyan University Press

Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...

. Silence is a collection of essays and lectures Cage wrote during the period from 1939 to 1961. The contents of the book is as follows:

• "Foreword" (1961)
• "Manifesto" (1952)
• "The Future of Music: Credo" (1937)
• "Experimental Music" (1957)
• "Experimental Music: Doctrine" (1955)
• "Composition as Process" (1958), essay in three parts:
  • "Changes"
  • "Indeterminacy"
  • "Communication"
• "Composition" (1952–1957), essay in two parts:
  • "To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes
    Music of Changes
    Music of Changes is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for pianist and friend David Tudor, it is Cage's earliest fully indeterminate instrumental work. The process of composition involved applying decisions made using the I Ching, a Chinese classic text that is commonly used as a...
    
    and Imaginary Landscape No. 4" (1952)
  • "To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music for Piano 21–52
    Music for Piano (Cage)
    Music for Piano is a series of 85 indeterminate musical compositions for piano by American avant-garde composer John Cage. All of these works were composed by making paper imperfections into sounds using various kinds of chance operations....
    
    " (1957)
• "Forerunners of Modern Music" (1949)
• "History of Experimental Music in the United States" (1959)
• "Erik Satie
  Erik Satie
  Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
  
  " (1958)
• "Edgar Varèse" (1958)
• "Four Statements on the Dance" (1939–1957)
  • "Goal: New Music, New Dance" (1939)
  • "Grace and Clarity" (1944)
  • "In This Day..." (1956)
  • "2 Pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance" (1957)
• "On Robert Rauschenberg
  Robert Rauschenberg
  Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
  
  , Artist, and His Work" (1961)
• "Lecture on Nothing" (1959)

Note that in the "Afternote" to the Lecture on Nothing (Silence, pg. 126) Cage states that it was first delivered in 1949 or 50. Most sources give the date of 1950.

• "Lecture on Something" (1951)
• "45' for a Speaker" (1954)
• "Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?" (1961)
• "Indeterminacy
  Indeterminacy in music
  Indeterminacy in music, which began early in the twentieth century in the music of Charles Ives, and was continued in the 1930s by Henry Cowell and carried on by his student, the experimental music composer John Cage beginning in 1951 , came to refer to the movement which grew up around Cage...
  
  " (1958)
• "Music Lovers' Field Companion" (1954)

Most of the works are preceded by a short commentary on their origins, some have an afterword provided. Several works feature unorthodox methods of presentation and/or composition. "The Future of Music: Credo" juxtaposes paragraphs of two different texts. The text of the first part of "Composition as Process" is presented in four columns, the text of "Erik Satie" in two. "45' for a Speaker" is similar to Cage's "time length" compositions: it provides detailed instructions for the speaker as to exactly when a particular sentence or a phrase should be said. "Where Are We Going? and What Are We Doing?" is presented in several types of typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

to better reflect the concept of the lecture, which was originally presented as four tapes running simultaneously. "Indeterminacy" is a collection of various anecdotes and short stories taken from life or books Cage read: the concept is to tell one story per minute, and to achieve the speaker has to either speed up or slow down, depending on the length of the story.