Cage and David Tudor in 1972. (Courtesy Erich Auerbach/Getty Images)

Back in 1960, John Cage appeared on the television show I've Got a Secret, and performed his 1959 compositions Water Walk. Someone uploaded a clip of the episode to YouTube a few years ago, proving that this is a truly beautiful world we all live in. To mark what would have been Cage's 100th birthday today, give it a look below. The work involves radios, ice cubes, a bathtub and a glass of water, among other things. Because of a union dispute, Cage had to alter his piece slightly, but let's not spoil things here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U

Cage in 1956. (Courtesy Victor Drees/Evening Standard/Getty Images)

As you may have heard, it's the centennial of John Cage's birth this year, and institutions all around the world are staging special events in honor of the late composer. It turns out that today happens to be the 60th anniversary of the first performance of Cage's landmark work, 4'33."

The work premiered on Aug. 29, 1952, in Woodstock, N.Y., at the Maverick Concert Hall, and was presented by the Woodstock Artists Association. David Tudor sat at a piano for the amount of time in the title, not playing, closing and then opening the keyboard lid to mark the end and beginning of each of the work's three movements.

Composer and author Kyle Gann recently discussed the piece for, yes, 4 minutes and 33 seconds with documentary filmmaker Cambiz A. Khosravi. The resulting video is a nice primer to the work, noting its relation to the thinking of Duchamp and Rauschenberg, and how Cage came up with the idea as a response of sorts to the popularity of Muzak in the late 1940s. Take a look below.

John Cage 4'33" from cambiz a. khosravi on Vimeo.

On Aug. 9, MoMA will hold a day of readings and performances. Participants, according to the museum's website, include Richard Kostelantez; Joan Retallack, poet, essayist, critic, and John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College; pianist and toy-piano virtuoso Margaret Leng Tan; and poet, editor, and curator Roger van Voorhees. Soprano Catherine Hancock will perform Cage's 1958 piece Aria, and Third Coast Percussion will play Cage-inspired percussion music. The event is free with museum admission.

John Cage, 'One^11 and 103,' 1992. (Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix)

Though it's somehow hard to believe, John Cage, who died in 1992 at the age of 79, would have turned 100 this year, on Sept. 5. High Line Art is marking the upcoming centennial by joining with Electronic Arts Intermix and Friends of the High Line to present Cage's film and sound piece One¹¹ and 103 (1992), from Aug. 2 through Sept. 13, on loop, as part of its new High Line Channel 14 series, which will present "films, videos, and sound installations" in the span of the High Line that stretches across West 14th Street.

High Line Art has an informative explanation of the piece:

One¹¹ and 103 is made up of the film One¹¹, the eleventh work in the Number Pieces series, and the sound composition 103. In this combined piece, abstractions of light travel across and into space created by Cage. Shot entirely in black and white, a camera pans across the blank wall of a Munich television studio, illuminated by soft cloud-like patches of light which drift across the view of the camera. To describe One¹¹ Cage wrote, “One¹¹ is a film without subject. There is light but no persons, no things, no ideas about repetition and variation. It is meaningless activity which is nonetheless communicative, like light itself, escaping our attention as communication because it has no content to restrict its transforming and informing power.”

The sound component, 103, is a 17-part orchestral piece composed using aleatoric methods.

Sounds like it will be a good one.

Update, July 19: Corrected Cage's birthdate.