John Cage (1912-1992) American, Extended Lullaby. Acrylic, spruce brass, and twelve 36-note Reuge music box mechanism. Size: 72 1/4 x 6 1/2 x 7 in. #1980 . #6 from an edition of 12, 1992/1994. Made in collaboration with the Swiss watchmaker Reuge, it is composed of 12 music boxes housed in a transparent acrylic cylinder, which acts as a sound box while leaving the mechanism visible. The sound is made up of fragments of Vexactions (1893) by Erik Satie. An admirer of the French composer, who he considered a constant inspiration, John Cage extracted notes from this well-known piece by following chance-determined indications from the I Ching or Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese divination text. Played together or separately, each music box can be activated by the viewer, producing a unique and random composition. John Cage was an American composer and music theorist. 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. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage's teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933?35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951.