Cage and Schoenberg

Cage started writing pieces for percussion, something that had been very rare up to that point. This is often portrayed as a break from the ideals of this teacher Schoenberg but in fact there's a clear continuity once you see what Cage was taking from Schoenberg. The two eventually parted ways. Although Cage always spoke highly of Schoenberg, Schoenberg later gave Cage a compliment of sorts when asked if any of his students had gone on to do anything interesting. At first he replied that none had, but then he mentioned Cage and said, of course he's not a composer but an inventor, of genius.