In the 1930s the composer John Cage learned a valuable lesson the importance of time in the structure of music. In art, as in life, timing is everything:
Yet of all the things in Cage’s Los Angeles years that “set [him] on fire” and shaped his life in fundamental ways, the most far-reaching was his decision, and good fortune, to work as a student with the composers Richard Bühlig and Arnold Schoenberg…. “Bühlig was a wonderful, cultivated man, and he taught me a great deal,” Cage confessed. “The first thing he said, after seeing my music was that I had to learn something about structure.” Bühlig also impressed upon Cage the crucial significance of time and timing: “One day when I arrived at his house half and hour early he slammed the door in my face and told me to come back at the proper time. I had some library books with me which I decided to return, and thus I arrived at his house a half hour late. He was simply furious. He lectured me for two hours on the importance of time–how it was essential to music and must always be carefully observed by everyone devoted to the art.
(Source: John Cage: composed in America, p. 91. By Marjorie Perloff, Charles Junkerman, University of Chicago)