Well, John Cage is actually a pretty cool guy, from what I saw of him on this video about him and his artist friend, Jasper Johns. I like his ideas about music - that the sounds you hear everyday are beautiful and just as musical as a song. I believe he made some recordings of industrial machines at work and what not...things like that, he considers music. I suppose the point of 4'33" was to force people to listen to things they usually ignore in a concert hall. My favorite music of his is his piano solos, which come with instructions to put certain objects on certain strings of the piano. I'm not sure if this is good for the piano, but it gives it a unique sound. John Cage's music is good to listen to once, maybe twice, but it's not something that appeals to me so much that I want to listen to it over and over. However, weirdos like him are necessary to keep stretching the boundaries of music farther and farther...If they didn't do that, music would never change.

Anywho, my favorite peice of piano music is Bach's Goldberg Variations...I adore Mozart, but my favorite would have to be Brahms overall, though Beethoven is a close second. The second movement of his seventh symphony is possibly my favorite composition of all time.