# What are your thoughts on 4'33" by John Cage?



## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

I created this theard so people could share their opinions on 4'3" and have a constructive discussion.

I don't know what I'm supposed to make of this piece. The piece is considered as a landmark work of modern classical music, yet also invites a wide range of reaction from acclaim to disgust. The lack of "sound" and the background noise, give me a distinct feeling of mediating. It's different from the other works I encountered. But on the other hand, forgive me if this sound amateurish, could anyone have done this? If Kanye West have done this and twitted a lofty explanation, won't we ridicule him for it? Is it just the name of the composer that make the piece "serious"? Is it *pretentious*?

But, given how much this piece generate discussion and uniquly different from other works such as Mozart, Vivaldi, and Mahler, could it _considered_ as a *masterpiece*?

Could *silence* be considered *music*? Is 4'33" just *art* or could it qualified as *music*? How does *background noise* affect your listening experience?

How did you *react* to the piece when you _first_ heard it?

Here is a audio clip of 4'3": 





I don't know that much about classical music, so I look forward to your posts.

Edit: Also be *civil* to one another, I don't want a flame war.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Oh god not again.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

It is the ultimate "Emperor's new clothes' in music. It is performance art for those who worry about such things as silence in music. It is an obvious nonsense. It could and should have maybe been a magazine article. It"s certainly not "classical music' but it is interesting as a 'thought' and probably revealing that 'just under 5 minutes of nothing' has become the USA's most important addition to the ultimate canon of creativity ....


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Knorf said:


> Oh god not again.


I hope I didn't did something bad. Why the reaction?


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> It is the ultimate "Emperor's new clothes' in music. It is performance art for those who worry about such things as silence in music. It is an obvious nonsense. It could and should have maybe been a magazine article. It"s certainly not "classical music' but it is interesting as a 'thought' and probably revealing that 'just under 5 minutes of nothing' has become the USA's most important addition to the ultimate canon of creativity ....


Few things are more shameful in art than belittling that which is not understood.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Conrad2 said:


> I hope I didn't did something bad. Why the reaction?


We had many, many, FAR TOO MANY, threads on this already. They just result in a poo flinging contest.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Art Rock said:


> We had many, many, FAR TOO MANY, threads on this already. They just result in a poo flinging contest.


That's sad to hear and know. Music supposed to mend us, not turn us against each other. Hopefully, this theard is the exception.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> I hope I didn't did something bad. Why the reaction?


You have lit the blue touchpaper. Now retire, in a hurry! 

Basically, you've brought up the subject of modernist music (and, indeed, whether silence can be considered music). It's a bit of a hot topic hereabouts. There is apparently a cabal of old fogeys that cannot be dealing with anything after 1791. And then there's the hip young crowd that can't be doing with much from before about 1913. And then there are the people in the gap who seem to like Brahms a lot.

Or something like that, anyway.

OK, cats! We gotta rumble!
And when you're a Jet, you stay a Jet!
Etc, etc.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> That's sad to hear and know. Music supposed to mend us, not turn us against each other. Hopefully, this theard is the exception.


Well, if you're sincere, the first important step is to understand that how this piece came about was a result of a very deep personal introspection on Cage's part regarding his Zen Buddhist faith. It was _not_ to be provocative. It was _not_ to make a joke. It was _not_ trying to be artsy-fartsy for the rep or fame or infamy. It was because Cage was a devout Zen Buddhist and was trying to work out what that meant for him as a composer (suppressing or ameliorating personal desire: desire which leads to suffering.)

For the record, I like Brahms, _and_ I like Cage, and see no reason not to.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

To give you a taste, here are over 2000 posts on the subject in just one thread (and there have been many more):

Why is 4'33" disparaged, while Western forms of sacred music get their own forum?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

> I created this theard so people could share their opinions on 4'3" and *have a constructive discussion*.


Nice thought, but unfortunately, it is not possible on TC.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> You have lit the blue touchpaper. Now retire, in a hurry!
> 
> Basically, you've brought up the subject of modernist music (and, indeed, whether silence can be considered music). It's a bit of a hot topic hereabouts. There is apparently a cabal of old fogeys that cannot be dealing with anything after 1791. And then there's the hip young crowd that can't be doing with much from before about 1913. And then there are the people in the gap who seem to like Brahms a lot.
> Or something like that, anyway.
> ...


I see. What a shame, censoring and stopping discussions because of a few heated vocals, defeat the purpose of a fourm. Isn't the purpose of a fourm is to share knowledge and bond over our common love of music? I will wait and see. If this theard turn into a flame war, I have to relegate my questions and theard regarding modernist music to somewhere else.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

I've seen this brought up many times in the few years I've been on TC. The piece certainly brings up a lot of emotions on both sides of the fence. I, for one, have never heard the piece and can not, in any clear conscious, say anything about it.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Well, let's give it another try then.

Personally speaking, I have no problem calling it music, and I understand the background. I won't listen to it though, and I really wish Cage had not composed it. The problem is that for many classical music lovers 4'33'' is the only Cage composition they know (or better put: have heard of), leading them to conclude that he is a con-artist and a charlatan. They are missing out on some of the better works of the 20th century (his prepared piano compositions and In a Landscape for starters).


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Knorf said:


> Well, if you're sincere, the first important step is to understand that how this piece came about was a result of a very deep personal introspection on Cage's part regarding his Zen Buddhist faith. It was _not_ to be provocative. It was _not_ to make a joke. It was _not_ trying to be artsy-fartsy for the rep or fame or infamy. It was because Cage was a devout Zen Buddhist and was trying to work out what that meant for him as a composer (suppressing or ameliorating personal desire: desire which leads to suffering.)
> 
> For the record, I like Brahms, _and_ I like Cage, and see no reason not to.


Yes, I read that Cage was influenced by Zen Buddhism on a Wikipedia article. I'm not familiar with Zen Buddhism, so could you please shed some light or point to a source I could read?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It isn't complicated. 4'33" is intended to make you notice the sounds in your environment and to suggest that they can be considered music. Whether it is itself a "piece of music" is a matter of definition. I don't think a reasonable definition of music includes either 4'33" or random sounds coming at us from our surroundings, but I'm not in a mood to debate it. 4'33" was a one-off, an experiment that doesn't need to be repeated. Nobody is going to author a 4'34." 

Cage or no Cage, taking at least 4'33" out of your day to be quiet and attend to your natural surroundings is a good idea.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Conrad2 said:


> I see. What a shame, censoring and stopping discussions because of a few heated vocals, defeat the purpose of a fourm. Isn't the purpose of a fourm is to share knowledge and bond over our common love of music? I will wait and see. If this theard turn into a flame war, I have to relegate my questions and theard regarding modernist music to somewhere else.


Couldn't agree more. But as we have seen over the past 14 days or so, there is a "gang mentality here' who seek only to have "their view' proclaimed as 'what can be spoken'... It is indeed the sign of decay.


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

"Never be clever for the sake of being clever"
-Glenn Gould


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Knorf said:


> Well, if you're sincere, the first important step is to understand that how this piece came about was a result of a very deep personal introspection on Cage's part regarding his Zen Buddhist faith. It was _not_ to be provocative. It was _not_ to make a joke. It was _not_ trying to be artsy-fartsy for the rep or fame or infamy. It was because Cage was a devout Zen Buddhist and was trying to work out what that meant for him as a composer (suppressing or ameliorating personal desire: desire which leads to suffering.)
> 
> For the record, I like Brahms, _and_ I like Cage, and see no reason not to.


Yes, I like classical music from 9th century chant on to what was written yesterday. While I enjoy much of what Cage has done, I don't think 4'33" is among his most interesting or enjoyable works. He had a statement to make about Muzak, silence or the absence of it, being open to appreciating sounds not thought as musical, and considering a broader definition of what constitutes music. The idea of nothingness in art was in the air around the time he created 4'33", Cage has pointed to Robert Rauschenberg's _White Paintings_ as related works in the fine arts. Rauschenberg traveled with Cage and Cunningham as a member of their dance troupe, providing sets and other conceptual aspects to their works.

The fact that 4'33" is still controversial says more about the entrenched elitist notions about ownership of classical music and less about John Cage and the ideas incorporated in 4'33".


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Art Rock said:


> Well, let's give it another try then.
> 
> Personally speaking, I have no problem calling it music, and I understand the background. I won't listen to it though, and I really wish Cage had not composed it. The problem is that for many classical music lovers 4'33'' is the only Cage composition they know (or better put: have heard of), leading them to conclude that he is a con-artist and a charlatan. They are missing out on some of the better works of the 20th century (his prepared piano compositions and In a Landscape for starters).


That's rather a harsh conclusion of a composer career based on only one work, that some you said draw. I'm pretty sure that most composer have done a work that we didn't like or care for, and if we were to based their portfolio on the work we don't like, then we would discard much of the entirety of music into the bin.

I listened to Cage's prepared piano and I enjoyed it. What a cascade of sound coming from a piano! In a Landscape, I'm not familiar with, and perhaps I give it a try.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

This was probably posted in another Cage or 4'33" thread but, what the heck, here we go again (quote from you know where):

Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:

Alphonse Allais's 1897 Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man, consisting of twenty-four blank measures. Allais was an associate of Erik Satie, and given Cage's profound admiration for Satie, it is possible that Cage was inspired by the Funeral March. When asked, Cage claimed he was unaware of Allais's composition at the time.

In Gaston Leroux's 1903 novel La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet [fr], silent concerts are given by the fictional Talpa people who dwell in the dark and silent Paris catacombs.

Erwin Schulhoff's 1919 "In futurum", a movement from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano. The Czech composer's meticulously notated composition is made up entirely of rests.

In Harold Acton's 1928 book Cornelian a musician conducts "performances consisting largely of silence".

In 1947, jazz musician Dave Tough joked that he was writing a play in which "A string quartet is playing the most advanced music ever written. It's made up entirely of rests. [...] Suddenly, the viola man jumps up in a rage and shakes his bow at the first violin. 'Lout,' he screams, 'you played that last measure wrong.'"

Yves Klein's 1949 Monotone-Silence Symphony (informally The Monotone Symphony, conceived 1947-48), an orchestral forty-minute piece whose second and last movement is a twenty-minute silence (the first movement being an unvarying twenty minute drone).


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> It isn't complicated. 4'33" is intended to make you notice the sounds in your environment and to suggest that they can be considered music. Whether it is itself a "piece of music" is a matter of definition. I don't think a reasonable definition of music includes either 4'33" or random sounds coming at us from our surroundings, but I'm not in a mood to debate it. 4'33" was a one-off, an experiment that doesn't need to be repeated. Nobody is going to author a 4'34."
> 
> Cage or no Cage, taking at least 4'33" out of your day to be quiet and attend to your natural surroundings is a good idea.


Yes, when I was listening to the piece I have a sense of mediating, where I was more attune to my room. Perhaps, that's the main reason why Cage created this.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Art Rock said:


> To give you a taste, here are over 2000 posts on the subject in just one thread (and there have been many more):
> 
> Why is 4'33" disparaged, while Western forms of sacred music get their own forum?


Yikes! I missed that theard somehow while searching if there was a theard about 4'33" beforehand.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Haydn70 said:


> This was probably posted in another Cage or 4'33" thread but, what the heck, here we go again (quote from you know where):
> 
> Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:
> 
> ...


This kind of post always surfaces when 4'33" is discussed. However, these examples were made without any intention of being performed, and in most cases were done tongue in cheek. Cage's 4'33" is entirely different in conception, intention, and purpose.

It ought to be enough that Cage's work as been performed countless times while these other works are footnotes to 4'33" and as far as I know have never been taken seriously.

As I said, a constructive discussion is impossible on TC concerning Cage and especially 4'33", and really new music (or the avant-garde) in general.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Conrad2 said:


> Yikes! I missed that theard somehow while searching if there was a theard about 4'33" beforehand.


Not to criticize the Talk Classical website as it is free and entertaining, but the search functionality is poor.

As such, don't blame yourself.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> I see. What a shame, censoring and stopping discussions because of a few heated vocals, defeat the purpose of a fourm. Isn't the purpose of a fourm is to share knowledge and bond over our common love of music? I will wait and see. If this theard turn into a flame war, I have to relegate my questions and theard regarding modernist music to somewhere else.


Well, it's not censoring if you have a punch-up over something, is it? It's having a punch-up. People are emotionally invested in things, music being one of the big things people emotionally invest in. You waltz into a crowded bar and declare 4 minutes of silence to be better music than what the piano player was playing, there will be a moment of additional silence... and then the punches and glasses start flying.

See, it's nice to say "isn't this supposed to be where we share and bond about our love music", but that sentence contains a fatal logical flaw, called 'begging the question': you've assumed the truth of that which is yet to be established. _Is_ 4'33" actually music? And it's over _that_ question that the bar fights will happen.

Anyway, I'm off out of this joint before it gets glass-happy!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Haydn70 said:


> This was probably posted in another Cage or 4'33" thread but, what the heck, here we go again (quote from you know where):
> 
> Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:
> 
> ...


This is amazing. Where did you find all this information? I would guess most of it is new to the forum.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

That trains has left the station. It is a settled matter that Cage was an important 20th century composer and that 4'33" was an important work. Only the most conservative, taste-wise, and closed-minded to much of the music of the 20th century continue to beat the dead horse about it not being music.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man (1897)


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Well, it's not censoring if you have a punch-up over something, is it? It's having a punch-up. People are emotionally invested in things, music being one of the big things people emotionally invest in. You waltz into a crowded bar and declare 4 minutes of silence to be better music than what the piano player was playing, there will be a moment of additional silence... and then the punches and glasses start flying.
> 
> See, it's nice to say "isn't this supposed to be where we share and bond about our love music", but that sentence contains a fatal logical flaw, called 'begging the question': you've assumed the truth of that which is yet to be established. _Is_ 4'33" actually music? And it's over _that_ question that the bar fights will happen.
> 
> Anyway, I'm off out of this joint before it gets glass-happy!


That's a good point, that we are discussing over whether 4'33" is music, and as such people are emotionally invest in, which may lead reason being tossed out of the window.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that " 4 minutes of silence to be better music than what the piano player was playing". I'm just curious about the 4'33".

Yeah, you probably made the best decision of getting out of here.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> This is amazing. Where did you find all this information? I would guess most of it is new to the forum.


Thanks Woodduck.

It is from the Wikipedia article on 4'33":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#:~:text=4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3%20(pronounced%20%22,Cage%20(1912%E2%80%931992).


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> This is amazing. Where did you find all this information? I would guess most of it is new to the forum.


You would guess wrong, it has appeared on TC before, and it is found in the Wikipedia article on 4'33". But as I said these works, some of which were fictional, are irrelevant concerning 4'33".

Okay - I'm out.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Interesting references in Post #21. Perhaps the focus on the Cage version of silence rather than those examples points to his greater skills at self-promotion - against any others which are real.

I think SanAntone picks up on the interesting point, though, in #19. Why is it controversial?

I might think it's nonsense, but then I think lots of things are nonsense which other people find sense in. I don't see why that should bother them.

Someone else might think it is interesting or clever or meaningful or (even) moving - whatever. That's fine by me, and it certainly doesn't bother me.

I can more understand why other pieces of avant-garde music be controversial - say someone decided to use the taped sounds of someone dying - perhaps violently - as part of a piece. Equally, aleatoric music could easily (I guess) cause controversy about how much randomness is too much and how much is fine (- after all, there is always some randomness in an imperfect world). But 4:33 - it's not got enough content to prompt much discussion.

Hence, I do find myself baffled by the vehemence it inspires.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

I don't consider Cage as composer to write down any established opinion. Nevertheless, among us, there are many fellow members who are experts with the modern music and maybe they can defend his work.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Eclectic Al said:


> Hence, I do find myself baffled by the vehemence it inspires.


I feel the same, when I was creating this thread, I didn't know that I was inviting a flame war to happen.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> That trains has left the station. It is a settled matter that Cage was an important 20th century composer and that 4'33" was an important work. Only the most conservative, taste-wise, and closed-minded to much of the music of the 20th century continue to beat the dead horse about it not being music.


Well not really. I have no problem with this little navel gazing trifle.... But it is only worshiped by 'the few'.... And they, like most religious nutters will never accept that the world is round. Cage's work here is flat earth theory for extreme believers in dogmatic nonsense. But try telling a young Christian that the god he worships is a man made fairytale....


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

It's seems that Cage's _4'33'_' is more profound as it discussed as opposed to how much it is actually "performed" or enjoyed. This makes it a thoughtful and important piece of concept art. Cage composed a number of fairly listenable and interesting pieces especially for piano and prepared piano that I consider within the realm of classical music, even if it resides on the outer limits of the standard repertoire but I don't consider _4'33''_ to be one of them.

John Cage had his hands in many things: music, concept art, electronic music, indeterminacy, Zen philosophy, poetry, chess, and mycology (mushroom enthusiasm).

I was taking a summer class at a local college just a few years back and there was a mushroom convention going on at the same time. I spoke to some of the mushroom enthusiasts and they were all fans of John Cage and what he did to promote mycological fandom.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Coach G said:


> It's seems that Cage's _4'33'_' is more profound as it discussed as opposed to how much it is actually "performed" or enjoyed. This makes it a thoughtful and important piece of concept art. Cage composed a number of fairly listenable and interesting pieces especially for piano and prepared piano that I consider within the realm of classical music, even if it resides on the outer limits of the standard repertoire but I don't consider _4'33''_ to be one of them.
> 
> John Cage had his hands in many things: music, concept art, electronic music, indeterminacy, Zen philosophy, chess, and mycology (mushroom enthusiasm).
> 
> I was taking a summer class at a local college just a few years back and there was a mushroom convention going on at the same time. I spoke to some of the mushroom enthusiasts and they were all fans of John Cage and what he did to promote mycological fandom.


To my inexperienced ear and eye, I was very interested in the concept of 4'3" and could consider it as art. On the issue of music, I'm not sure. I felt it was more like meditation as I become more attune to my surrounding.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

But isn't the real question whether John Williams is a great composer?


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> Well not really. I have no problem with this little navel gazing trifle.... But it is only worshiped by 'the few'.... And they, like most religious nutters will never accept that the world is round. Cage's work here is flat earth theory for extreme believers in dogmatic nonsense. But try telling a young Christian that the god he worships is a man made fairytale....


That's an angry post, and a bit of a stretch. There's no "Church of John Cage" where you sit in the sanctuary for an hour and listen to no music, no sermon, no prayers, and no theology.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> The fact that 4'33" is still controversial says more about the *entrenched elitist notions* about ownership of classical music and less about John Cage and the ideas incorporated in 4'33".
> 
> It is* a settled matter* that Cage was an *important* 20th century composer and that 4'33" was an important work. Only the most conservative, taste-wise, and closed-minded to much of the music of the 20th century continue to beat the dead horse about it not being music.
> 
> As I said, a constructive discussion is impossible on TC concerning Cage and especially 4'33", and really new music (or the avant-garde) in general.


"Importance" is a matter of context. To how many classical music listeners is 4'33" important? To most, I'm guessing, it's quite trivial, and a mere historical curiosity.

The ideas behind 4'33" are few and simple, but there will always be people to whom they are novel. Is it better to let people discuss them freely, or to shut down discussion with _ex cathedra_ pronouncements purporting to represent a politically correct cultural perspective? I'd say the "elitism" is not on the side of those who question the work's artistic value, but of those who want to define for the world what matters are "settled" and whose minds are actually "closed." Cage is thoroughly "establishment" now, but that has never been a guarantee of value.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

............


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Haydn70 said:


> This was probably posted in another Cage or 4'33" thread but, what the heck, here we go again (quote from you know where):
> 
> Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:
> 
> ...


I guess whoever wrote the book of _Ecclesiastes_ was right. There IS nothing new under the sun!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> It is a settled matter that Cage was an important 20th century composer and that 4'33" was an important work.


Settled by whom? Again, let's ask ourselves. Who are the musical equivalents of:

"It's not only artists who are at fault; it is equally the fault of the so-called art community: the museum heads, gallery owners, and the critics who encourage and financially enable the production of this rubbish. It is they who champion graffiti and call it genius, promote the scatological and call it meaningful. It is they who, in reality, are the naked emperors of art, for who else would spend $10 million dollars on a rock and think it is art."


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Personally, my encounter with this piece has caused me to be aware of my surroundings to the degree that now I'm never bored. Like when my wife is dress shopping and I'm stuck in the "guy chair," I concentrate on feeling the air, listening for sounds I would never hear otherwise, and looking at things I would normally overlook. I end up feeling very peaceful. 

So whether the piece itself is good or bad isn't the point; how you see the world after the experience, I think, is what matters. As Cage said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." Sometimes the poetry is the spaces between the lines, the anticipation of what is to come or the acceptance of what has come or just embracing the experience of the moment.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

One important thing to realize is that 4'33" is not about silence. In fact in some sense it is about the opposite. Cage visited an anechoic chamber, which is a room designed to absorb all sound. He heard the sound of blood in his ears. He realized that there was no such thing as silence for humans. One point of 4'33" (as Woodduck explained above) is that there are always background sounds, and one can focus on them if few other sounds exists. Cage was fascinated by sound and loved to hear the sounds that the rest of us find dull or even bothersome (e.g. traffic in New York City).

A TC member once posted that he knew a cellist who began every concert with a performance of 4'33". Most people simply don't understand the work. They talk dismissively about silence, they call Cage a charlatan, and they make fun of the work (many of these jokes can be rather funny).

Personally, I like several of Cage's works, but I have no affection for 4'33". I don't view Cage as a charlatan or 4'33" as silly nonsense. Though I'm happy to accept others' view that 4'33" is music, I personally do not consider it music for a specific reason. For me, music consists of sounds conceived intentionally by the composer. Since the composer has no control over the sounds during 4'33", it does not satisfy that criterion.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

WhateverDude said:


> Couldn't agree more. But as we have seen over the past 14 days or so, there is a "gang mentality here' who seek only to have "their view' proclaimed as 'what can be spoken'... It is indeed the sign of decay.


This view is interesting because honestly I'm not sure what "their view" is. I've read quite a few threads on TC, and I've seen members talk about one side pushing "their views" on others. The problem is "their view" differs depending on who is posting.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"While there is a lot of skill in a lot of modern and contemporary art, *there's also a lot of art that is more about the idea than it is about skill.* And so yes you could do it but you didn't. "
-Elisabeth Sherman, an assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York










But can Cage proudly say 
"While there is a lot of skill in a lot of modern and contemporary music, *there's also a lot of music that is more about the idea than it is about skill.* And so yes you could do it but you didn't. "
about his work?


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

mmsbls said:


> One important thing to realize is that 4'33" is not about silence. In fact in some sense it is about the opposite. Cage visited an anechoic chamber, which is a room designed to absorb all sound. He heard the sound of blood in his ears. He realized that there was no such thing as silence for humans. One point of 4'33" (as Woodduck explained above) is that there are always background sounds, and one can focus on them if few other sounds exists. Cage was fascinated by sound and loved to hear the sounds that the rest of us find dull or even bothersome (e.g. traffic in New York City).
> 
> A TC member once posted that he knew a cellist who began every concert with a performance of 4'33". Most people simply don't understand the work. They talk dismissively about silence, they call Cage a charlatan, and they make fun of the work (many of these jokes can be rather funny).
> 
> Personally, I like several of Cage's works, but I have no affection for 4'33". I don't view Cage as a charlatan or 4'33" as silly nonsense. Though I'm happy to accept others' view that 4'33" is music, I personally do not consider music for a specific reason. For me, music consists of sounds conceived intentionally by the composer. Since the composer has no control over the sounds during 4'33", it does not satisfy that criterion.


I agree with you. While I listening to the piece, I could more easily pick up the ambience of my room. Your link is very interesting. Prior to listening to 4'33", I didn't know what is an anechoic chamber is. I heard about the Orfield Laboratories, which is called the "most silent room on Earth", and perhaps the experience there could be similar to one listen to in 4'3".


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

There are a couple of interesting things about Alphonse Allais' "Funeral march composed for the funeral of a great deaf man." The Preface states, "The author of the Funeral March was inspired, in its composition, this principle accepted by everyone, that great pains are silent." Also Allais's work contains the tempo marking "Lento rigolando", but he missed a wonderful opportunity to include dynamics as well. 

The bottom line is that Allais's work was about silence, but Cage's was without question not. Also Allais's work was intended to be humorous while clearly Cage's was not.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

How about a piece that lasts 639 years? More conceptual wackiness courtesy of John Cage and friends!

From Wiki:

"Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is a musical piece by John Cage and the subject of one of the longest-lasting musical performances yet undertaken. It was originally written in 1987 for organ and is adapted from the earlier work ASLSP 1985; a typical performance of the piano version lasts 20 to 70 minutes. In 1985, Cage opted to omit the detail of exactly how slowly the piece should be played.

The performance of the organ version at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640."

Here are some excerpts from an article on the ClassicFM website dated September 8, 2020:

"This Saturday in Germany, a single organ chord held for 2,527 days changed and it was kind of a big deal.

Organ2/ASLSP, 'As Slow as Possible' is a keyboard work written by John Cage in the mid-1980s. The score consists of eight pages of music, to be played at the piano or organ, well, very, very slowly.

Often a typical performance would last about an hour, but Cage didn't suggest a tempo marking in his original score. This of course presented a challenge to quirky music enthusiasts: how could this piece be played truly, 'as slow as possible?'

Many pianists and organists have performed this piece in single durations of up to, and beyond, 12 hours.

In 2001, an ambitious group of artists with a lot of time on their hands began work at a specially-built organ at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany.

Their interpretation of 'As Slow as Possible' has a scheduled duration of 639 years ending with, we hope, rapturous applause in the year 2640.

Before Saturday, the most recent note change occurred on 5 October 2013. On 5 September 2020, the organ was reconfigured to playing a G sharp and an E. The next scheduled chord change is on 5 February 2022."

February 2022 for the next chord change...book your flight and hotel reservations now!! Be there or be square!! No jeans or capris please!! Ten cents stag, 15 cents drag!!

Link to the Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible

Link to the ClassicFM article: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/cage/as-slow-as-possible-organ-chord-change/


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mmsbls said:


> Also Allais's work contains the tempo marking "Lento rigolando", but *he missed a wonderful opportunity to include dynamics as well.*


So did Cage:





In fact, Erwin Schulhoff's In Futurum, Part III from 5 Pittoresken (1919), which predates Cage's 4'33" by 33 years shows far more originality. Schulhoff even has fermatas in his score:
0:58


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> John Cage has written some avant-garde music, pieces for prepared piano and other things. But his reputation is based on 4'33"


I think Cage is a bit disappointing in this work by being a downright conformist. I consider his pieces for prepared piano a better part of his output. There's some wonderful originality in those:



hammeredklavier said:


> the melodies of Sonata II are actually cute:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

An illustration came to my mind on this, coming from a computer programming sort of view.

The previous piece before Cage's 4'33", comprises entirely of rests, is similar to an empty string (string s = ""). It takes memory to store it, and is assigned something, analogous to writing a bunch of rests on the staff.

In Cage's 4'33", there is no score, it is entirely spontaneous. It's almost like a variable or string that is dependent on something else, with no predefined value, and depends on user (or audience) input. In the most basic sense it is doesn't matter what the audience or user inputs. It exists in time and space (and computer memory).

In musique concerte, there is also no score, but still predefined and consists of real-life sounds, like leaving out a quotation mark in a definition of a string and the programmer keeps typing away, which becomes the string itself (string s = "[whatever the person keeps typing until the next quotation mark]").

So in one way, 4'33" challenges the view that music has to be composed or preconceived, and is a step beyond musique concerete which already utilizes sounds as the raw material, but is composed and preconceived.

It doesn't help that Cage himself refers to 4'33" as his silent piece, when it's not really about silence. It's about being not pre-defined.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

1) I have never attended (nor wanted to attend) a performance, but have always viewed it as just another demo of the mid-20th century idea that "art" is "whatever you put a frame around." I meditate enough to not need it.

2) To the uninitiated, Japanese Noh theatre can be excruciatingly static. There is an accepted criterion for judging a Noh performer, that the moment of "no action" is as important as one of action/acting in conferring master status on the performer. Sort of like a cross between what we call stage presence and the performer's inner light or virtue showing through. Minimalist art would also count as an example. I am unaware of any literary equivalent.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Conrad2 said:


> I created this theard so people could share their opinions on 4'3" and have a constructive discussion.
> 
> I don't know what I'm supposed to make of this piece. The piece is considered as a landmark work of modern classical music, yet also invites a wide range of reaction from acclaim to disgust. The lack of "sound" and the background noise, give me a distinct feeling of mediating. It's different from the other works I encountered. But on the other hand, forgive me if this sound amateurish, could anyone have done this? If Kanye West have done this and twitted a lofty explanation, won't we ridicule him for it? Is it just the name of the composer that make the piece "serious"? Is it *pretentious*?
> 
> ...


I think it is a concept, it is certainly not music and I disagree with its concept. I think it is wrong, superficial and a sham.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I think it is a concept, it is certainly not music and I disagree with its concept. I think it is wrong, superficial and a sham.


I am curious how a work can be wrong. Could you explain? Also what do you mean by a sham?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I am curious how a work can be wrong. Could you explain? Also what do you mean by a sham?


You don't need a group or a soloist to demonstrate silence by wasting paid audiences. You can do that yourself at home or anywhere you like, so it's wrong because it is utilizing valuable resources to showoff a basic childish idea. It's a sham because Cage was a mediocre composer and ran out of steam on composing proper music, so he came up with a notoriety to prop up his fame.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> I think Cage is a bit disappointing in this work by being a downright conformist. I consider his pieces for prepared piano a better part of his output. There's some wonderful originality in those:


John Cage was the one who invented prepared piano according to Wikipedia, and he invented after realizing that the piano can produce the sound of the whole orchestra. It's very fascinating and it introduced me to other composers such as Hauschka. Sadly, 4'3" is a piece that doesn't really connect with me. I find the concept interesting, but that's it.

Hauschka: 




Prepared Piano Wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

And by the way, this thread is also the quiet intentions of Cage with _4'33"_ - to generate discussion about the "work" and about Cage.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

ArtMusic said:


> You don't need a group or a soloist to demonstrate silence by wasting paid audiences. You can do that yourself at home or anywhere you like, so it's wrong because it is utilizing valuable resources to showoff a basic childish idea. It's a sham because Cage was a mediocre composer and ran out of steam on composing proper music, so he came up with a notoriety to prop up his fame.


That's rather harsh. Based on the other posts, isn't his work concerned about ambience?



mmsbls said:


> He realized that there was no such thing as silence for humans. One point of 4'33" (as Woodduck explained above) is that there are always background sounds, and one can focus on them if few other sounds exists.


Also John Cage developed the prepared piano technique that other composers used to this day, so I wouldn't characterize him as a mediocre composer. Perhaps, 4'33" wasn't his best piece, but isn't fair to base one work as the whole of a career?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> You don't need a group or a soloist to demonstrate silence by wasting paid audiences. You can do that yourself at home or anywhere you like, so it's wrong because it is utilizing valuable resources to showoff a basic childish idea.


This comment doesn't seem to have much to do with 4'33" since the work is not intended to demonstrate silence. It's meant partly to show people that _even when you think there are no sounds, the environment actually has many._ Your comments illustrate something I've always felt strongly. If 4'33" is performed for people such as you, who have no understanding of its intent, then the experience will likely be vastly less effective than desired. I think all performances should be proceeded by an explanation of the work's intent.



ArtMusic said:


> It's a sham because Cage was a mediocre composer and ran out of steam on composing proper music, so he came up with a notoriety to prop up his fame.


Do you honestly believe that Cage created 4'33" to prop up his fame? Honestly? And if so, are you guessing?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> This comment doesn't seem to have much to do with 4'33" since the work is not intended to demonstrate silence. It's meant partly to show people that _even when you think there are no sounds, the environment actually has many._ Your comments illustrate something I've always felt strongly. If 4'33" is performed for people such as you, who have no understanding of its intent, then the experience will likely be vastly less effective than desired. I think all performances should be proceeded by an explanation of the work's intent.
> 
> Do you honestly believe that Cage created 4'33" to prop up his fame? Honestly? And if so, are you guessing?


I do understand the concept of _4'33"_. It's a childish one by a composer who ran out of steam in composing music. Infamous notoriety comes to mind with this conceptual work.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I do understand the concept of _4'33"_. It's a childish one by a composer who ran out of steam in composing music. Infamous notoriety comes to mind with this conceptual work.


OK, I think we won't make much progress here. I'm just glad that you didn't end any of your replies to me with "Fact!". Thank You.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> OK, I think we won't make much progress here. I'm just glad that you didn't end any of your replies to me with "Fact!". Thank You.


Wikipedia: In defining noise music and Paul Hegarty in _Noise/Music: A History (2007)_ contends that Cage's _4′33″_ represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, noise music, as with _4′33″_, is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music.

I agree with the above except the part on "desirable" sound; there aren't any.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Conrad2 said:


> I hope I didn't did something bad. Why the reaction?


From my experience, this thread, like any other with 4'33" as the topic, will descend into:

1. End up as a thread that bashes all of avantgarde classical
2. Belittles 4'33" as a joke, and therefore, all of Cage's music
3. Will end up bashing nonrepresentational and abstract visual art 
4. Will bash John Cage's skill, despite his understanding of theory

So, there you go.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I can’t believe that John Cage would have been happy that his most discussed ‘work’ and the one that he seems to be most remembered for would be 4’33”.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Simon Moon said:


> From my experience, this thread, like any other with 4'33" as the topic, will descend into:
> 
> 1. End up as a thread that bashes all of avantgarde classical
> 2. Belittles 4'33" as a joke, and therefore, all of Cage's music
> ...


Got the message.


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## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> One important thing to realize is that 4'33" is not about silence. In fact in some sense it is about the opposite. Cage visited an anechoic chamber, which is a room designed to absorb all sound. He heard the sound of blood in his ears. He realized that there was no such thing as silence for humans. One point of 4'33" (as Woodduck explained above) is that there are always background sounds, and one can focus on them if few other sounds exists. Cage was fascinated by sound and loved to hear the sounds that the rest of us find dull or even bothersome (e.g. traffic in New York City).
> 
> A TC member once posted that he knew a cellist who began every concert with a performance of 4'33". Most people simply don't understand the work. They talk dismissively about silence, they call Cage a charlatan, and they make fun of the work (many of these jokes can be rather funny).


I think it's just glorification of a simple idea. Realizing there's always ambient sound then what? I've been in an anechoic chamber and it was really not that interesting. 
If the point of Cage's piece was to convey this idea, I'm afraid it is not a successful attempt. 4'33" of a bunch of people doing nothing in a hall, does not resemble experience in an anechoic chamber whatsoever. Audiences would never receive the same "fascination" he had. All they can hear is background noise which they have been hearing every moment in their lives. How are they supposed to be amazed or amused by that? 
Perhaps his Buddhism made him able to find value in the tiniest of things? To find music in noise? I always think his ideas are better represented in a book. These "compositions" are bound to look like gimmicks to people who don't share his ideology.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

DaveM said:


> I can't believe that John Cage would have been happy that his most discussed 'work' and the one that he seems to be most remembered for would be 4'33".


Now I kind of feel bad. I'm more familiar with his prepared piano pieces, and I posted this theard, because I didn't quite understand 4'3". Afters post from Woodduck, mmsbls, Knorf, and others, I began to understand more about 4'3". I naively thought that such a theard won't spark such a strong reaction. Clearly I have overlooked past theards which could have illuminated TC community views on John Cage. At least I now I know what questions shouldn't be asked here and best suited somewhere else.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

DaveM said:


> I can't believe that John Cage would have been happy that his most discussed 'work' and the one that he seems to be most remembered for would be 4'33".


According to Wikipedia (the source is in a book), "In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work."


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

rice said:


> I think it's just glorification of a simple idea. Realizing there's always ambient sound then what? I've been in an anechoic chamber and it was really not that interesting.
> If the point of Cage's piece was to convey this idea, I'm afraid it is not a successful attempt. 4'33" of a bunch of people doing nothing in a hall, does not resemble experience in an anechoic chamber whatsoever. Audiences would never receive the same "fascination" he had. All they can hear is background noise which they have been hearing every moment in their lives. How are they supposed to be amazed or amused by that?


I don't think Cage created 4'33" to give people a sense of what it is like to be in an anechoic chamber. I think he wanted people to actually focus on the background noises rather than simply hear them. We all hear the background, but our brains do an excellent job of filtering those noises out so we don't listen to them. He wanted people's attention on those sounds that we normally filter out.



rice said:


> Perhaps his Buddhism made him able to find value in the tiniest of things? To find music in noise? I always think his ideas are better represented in a book. These "compositions" are bound to look like gimmicks to people who don't share his ideology.


I agree that most people will think of 4'33" as silly, a gimmick, obvious, etc..


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Conrad2 said:


> Now I kind of feel bad. I'm more familiar with his prepared piano pieces, and I posted this theard, because I didn't quite understand 4'3". Afters post from Woodduck, mmsbls, Knorf, and others, I began to understand more about 4'3". I naively thought that such a theard won't spark such a strong reaction. Clearly I have overlooked past theards which could have illuminated TC community views on John Cage. At least I now I know what questions shouldn't be asked here and best suited somewhere else.


There's no issue with starting a thread such as this one. People come to TC and start threads on many subjects that have been discussed before. Sometimes a new thread will gets new ideas or new perspectives. It's true that 4'33" does have a bit of a history, but that's OK. Cage's 4'33" is considered an important work by many in the classical music community, but others clearly don't feel that way. That's fine. As long as comments remain focused on the work and not on other members, we're happy to have such discussions.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Conrad2 said:


> Now I kind of feel bad. I'm more familiar with his prepared piano pieces, and I posted this theard, because I didn't quite understand 4'3". Afters post from Woodduck, mmsbls, Knorf, and others, I began to understand more about 4'3". I naively thought that such a theard won't spark such a strong reaction. Clearly I have overlooked past theards which could have illuminated TC community views on John Cage. At least I now I know what questions shouldn't be asked here and best suited somewhere else.


I'll say it again: don't feel bad, Conrad2. You made an effort to see if such a topic existed and due to the inefficiency of the TC search functionality you were under the impression it didn't. I tried searching on 4'33" both with "Search Titles Only" and Search Entire Posts" and got zip.

Sorry to be so crabby about this but I spent 17 years in information technology as a web/database developer and stuff like this bugs me.

But let me add that I think that other than the search issue, TC is a great site. :tiphat:


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> *I don't think Cage created 4'33" to give people a sense of what it is like to be in an anechoic chamber.* I think he wanted people to actually focus on the background noises rather than simply hear them. We all hear the background, but our brains do an excellent job of filtering those noises out so we don't listen to them. He wanted people's attention on those sounds that we normally filter out.
> 
> I agree that most people will think of 4'33" as silly, a gimmick, obvious, etc..


Indeed! I spent about an hour in one with some fellow composers...weird, very weird! Sounds severely damped, sounds seeming to travel about one foot then dead, etc. I faced one of the "walls" and played a violin and people a few feet behind me heard nothing. Cage wanted people to hear ambient sounds of which there are hardly any in an anechoic chamber. Strange, stuffy, my-ears-are-kinda-blocked sensations in it. But it was extremely interesting and I am glad I had the experience.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mmsbls said:


> OK, I think we won't make much progress here. I'm just glad that you didn't end any of your replies to me with "Fact!". Thank You.


But can we at least agree that



> "While there is a lot of skill in a lot of modern and contemporary art, *there's also a lot of art that is more about the idea than it is about skill.* And so yes you could do it but you didn't. "
> -Elisabeth Sherman, an assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York


The same can be said about Cage?

*"There's a lot of avant-garde music (like Cage's) that is more about the idea than it is about skill."*


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

rice said:


> I think it's just glorification of a simple idea. Realizing there's always ambient sound then what? I've been in an anechoic chamber and it was really not that interesting.
> If the point of Cage's piece was to convey this idea, I'm afraid it is not a successful attempt. 4'33" of a bunch of people doing nothing in a hall, does not resemble experience in an anechoic chamber whatsoever. Audiences would never receive the same "fascination" he had. All they can hear is background noise which they have been hearing every moment in their lives. How are they supposed to be amazed or amused by that?
> Perhaps his Buddhism made him able to find value in the tiniest of things? To find music in noise? I always think his ideas are better represented in a book. These "compositions" are bound to look like gimmicks to people who don't share his ideology.


I think this is essentially right as far as it goes, but the piece is also intended to suggest that noise can be heard as music. That's why the concert hall setting is an essential part of it; it isn't just a meditation on sound, but on sound considered as music. This conceptual element makes it different from Buddhist mindfulness meditation, where it isn't part of the experience to be concerned with what sound or music is, or even to be listening to it in an active or appreciative way.

My guess is that the experiment generally fails on first exposure, where an audience will be either baffled or fascinated by the oddity of the situation and more inclined to be wondering where the music is than to be tuning in to ambient noises. Once you know the "gimmick," you can be a willing participant in the rite and groove on rustling programs, sneezes, burps and farts, and unmuffled motorcycles creating the Doppler effect.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

In all sincerity, I couldn't care less about 4'33". I'm just amused by the defensiveness it arouses.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

hammeredklavier said:


> But can we at least agree that
> 
> The same can be said about Cage?
> 
> *"There's a lot of avant-garde music (like Cage's) that is more about the idea than it is about skill."*


I do agree that Cage's works that do not include conventional instruments, such as 4'33" and "Child of Tree", are more about ideas than the use of skill. The works of Cage that I like (e.g. In a Landscape and Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano) are more about musical skill than about ideas.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> According to Wikipedia (the source is in a book), "In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work."


I wonder if he would say that now, 39 years later?


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Who would pay to see/hear this in a concert hall?

And who would you like to see perform it? Anyone can do it, even a non-musician. Instead of a pianist or orchestra, the stage hands could sit there. Would you feel cheated then?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mmsbls said:


> The works of Cage that I like (e.g. In a Landscape and Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano) are more about musical skill than about ideas.


between these:



hammeredklavier said:


> the melodies of Sonata II are actually cute:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


which do you think are more about musical skill than about ideas?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Conrad2 said:


> Now I kind of feel bad. I'm more familiar with his prepared piano pieces, and I posted this theard, because I didn't quite understand 4'3". Afters post from Woodduck, mmsbls, Knorf, and others, I began to understand more about 4'3". I naively thought that such a theard won't spark such a strong reaction. Clearly I have overlooked past theards which could have illuminated TC community views on John Cage. At least I now I know what questions shouldn't be asked here and best suited somewhere else.


BY the way, the best way to search for anything on TalkClassical is to use Google. In the search bar you can type:

<topic words> site:talkclassical.com

or for Cage's 4'33"

Cage 4'33" site:talkclassical.com

Basically Google will search within TalkClassical.com for any pages with Cage and 4'33" (or whatever else you wish to search for.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

hammeredklavier said:


> between these:
> 
> which do you think are more about musical skill than about ideas?


I'm sorry, but I don't understand your question. The list seems to have one Sonata and 4 excerpts from a soundtrack. I would guess that all of them are more about musical skill than ideas, but I don't think that's what you are asking maybe.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

mmsbls said:


> BY the way, the best way to search for anything on TalkClassical is to use Google. In the search bar you can type:
> 
> <topic words> site:talkclassical.com
> 
> ...


Thank you! I will used this from now on.


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Conrad2 said:


> *Music supposed to mend us,* not turn us against each other. Hopefully, this theard is the exception.


Yes, but what's this got to do with 4'33?


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

RogerWaters said:


> Yes, but what's this got to do with 4'33?


The post you are referring to is my exasperated reaction to reading past threads about 4'33 that I overlooked when I was searching if a thread was done on this subject before creating this thread, learning that past threads resulted in spilled blood and tears, and my perhaps, misplaced hope for this thread to be different. In short, you can ignore the post in question.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Open Book said:


> Who would pay to see/hear this in a concert hall?
> 
> And who would you like to see perform it? Anyone can do it, even a non-musician. Instead of a pianist or orchestra, the stage hands could sit there. Would you feel cheated then?


Not only would I not pay to see/hear this, I wouldn't attend a free performance...well, I would consider that if this were the performing ensemble:









That's the beauty of 4'33"....no musicians needed!


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Conrad2 said:


> Music supposed to mend us.


That would be my view, but we are living in the post modern era and tragedy is over .....


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

HenryPenfold said:


> That would be my view, but we are living in the post modern era and tragedy is over .....


I still believed that tragedy is possible. Rue the day, when tragedy is no more. Your post remind me of a memorable quote from 1984 by George Orwell.

"Tragedy, he [Winston] perceived, belonged to the ancient time... Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows". 
- 1984 by George Orwell

Been a long time since I read that book.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Open Book said:


> Who would pay to see/hear this in a concert hall?
> 
> And who would you like to see perform it? Anyone can do it, even a non-musician. *Instead of a pianist or orchestra, the stage hands could sit there.* Would you feel cheated then?


The piece requires musicians in order to make a statement about music.


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Conrad2 said:


> The post you are referring to is my exasperated reaction to reading past threads about 4'33 that I overlooked when I was searching if a thread was done on this subject before creating this thread, learning that past threads resulted in spilled blood and tears, and my perhaps, misplaced hope for this thread to be different. In short, you can ignore the post in question.


I wasn't having a go at you. It was an attempt at calling into question the musical status of 4'33.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Conrad2 said:


> I still believed that tragedy is possible. Rue the day, when tragedy is no more. Your post remind me of a memorable quote from 1984 by George Orwell.
> 
> "Tragedy, he [Winston] perceived, belonged to the ancient time... Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows".
> - 1984 by George Orwell
> ...


An interesting quote. But does it not support my point?

I was only saying to a friend a couple of weeks ago that 1984 is overdue for a reread.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

HenryPenfold said:


> An interesting quote. But does it not support my point?
> 
> I was only saying to a friend a couple of weeks ago that 1984 is overdue for a reread.


I don't think so, as we are not yet living in the world of 1984. We are still of capable of feeling tragedy, such as when a child lose their parents, for example Winston losing his parents. I was able to empathize with Winston longing for his parents. We have not yet lost the deep and complex emotion that is absent in 1984. Perhaps we on the way to losing it, but as of now, no.

Perhaps, I should also reread it, it has been several years for me since I touched it.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

rice said:


> I think it's just glorification of a simple idea. Realizing there's always ambient sound then what? I've been in an anechoic chamber and it was really not that interesting.
> If the point of Cage's piece was to convey this idea, I'm afraid it is not a successful attempt. 4'33" of a bunch of people doing nothing in a hall, does not resemble experience in an anechoic chamber whatsoever. Audiences would never receive the same "fascination" he had. All they can hear is background noise which they have been hearing every moment in their lives. How are they supposed to be amazed or amused by that?
> Perhaps his Buddhism made him able to find value in the tiniest of things? To find music in noise? I always think his ideas are better represented in a book. These "compositions" are bound to look like gimmicks to people who don't share his ideology.


What happens if it wasn't Cage who had that idea but say, a music student beat him to it? Let's say a music student "composed" _4'33"_. Would that student even get that much notice? I doubt it. I think the music student's professor would over look it. But just because it was by a "composer" who thinks about music, _4'33"_ has gained more recognition.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Thread created today, already seven pages long. Yep, time to move on.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> There's no issue with starting a thread such as this one. People come to TC and start threads on many subjects that have been discussed before. Sometimes a new thread will gets new ideas or new perspectives. It's true that 4'33" does have a bit of a history, but that's OK. Cage's 4'33" is considered an important work by many in the classical music community, but others clearly don't feel that way. That's fine. As long as comments remain focused on the work and not on other members, we're happy to have such discussions.


Perhaps TC should do away with their search box and explicitly inform new members that a decent search engine would work.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

janxharris said:


> Perhaps TC should do away with their search box and explicitly inform new members that a decent search engine would work.


I'm not sure we have the ability to easily remove the Search from vBulletin display. We have at various times posted about using Google to search, but obviously not everyone has seen those posts. We could place a message in notices to new members.


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## bluto32 (Apr 25, 2015)

I don't have a problem with anyone who believes 4'33'' is (i) music or even (ii) good. The first depends on one's definition of music; the second is purely subjective. Each to their own.

I am firmly in the "What??!!" camp, and admit to being surprised by how many musicians take it seriously. But for those who can't get enough, it has been remastered and considerably extended over the years. There are plenty of 74' and 80' versions available on the Sony and Verbatim labels, among others.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> I don't think Cage created 4'33" to give people a sense of what it is like to be in an anechoic chamber. I think he wanted people to actually focus on the background noises rather than simply hear them. We all hear the background, but our brains do an excellent job of filtering those noises out so we don't listen to them. He wanted people's attention on those sounds that we normally filter out.
> 
> I agree that most people will think of 4'33" as silly, a gimmick, obvious, etc..


He could've simply written out that as a paragraph of prose rather than dressing it up as a musical piece, which, let's face it, it isn't.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Have posted this before - I wonder what the hiring fee was for the score and parts?

At least the conductor got a laugh...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I do kind of think it's condescending or egoistic of Cage to do the Zen thing in a concert hall. I'd much rather (and do) go out in nature to be alone, and listen to those sounds, over sounds of coughs, snickering, etc. It's harder to focus when you have other people on all sides of you. I still think it's poorly conceived and executed.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> What happens if it wasn't Cage who had that idea but say, a music student beat him to it? Let's say a music student "composed" _4'33"_. Would that student even get that much notice? I doubt it. I think the music student's professor would over look it. But just because it was by a "composer" who thinks about music, _4'33"_ has gained more recognition.


Alphonse Allais (20 October 1854 - 28 October 1905) was a French writer and humorist, not a composer.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> I do kind of think it's condescending or egoistic of Cage to do the Zen thing in a concert hall. I'd much rather (and do) go out in nature to be alone, and listen to those sounds, over sounds of coughs, snickering, etc. It's harder to focus when you have other people on all sides of you. I still think it's poorly conceived and executed.


This was written in 1952, back when Zen was practiced on the fringes of New York society but was slowly making inroads into what was considered the underground. I don't think that at that point in time, introducing the concept of mindfulness to that audience at Woodstock would be considered condescending; rather, he would be attempting to open them up to a different type of experience. As far as execution, I don't think the performance had the ambient noise that he was expecting, so it probably was poorly executed.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Phil loves classical said:


> I do kind of think it's condescending or egoistic of Cage to do the Zen thing in a concert hall. I'd much rather (and do) go out in nature to be alone, and listen to those sounds, over sounds of coughs, snickering, etc. It's harder to focus when you have other people on all sides of you. I still think it's poorly conceived and executed.


It's a concept piece. It's supposed to make people think and discuss, which it has obviously done. I imagine that if there is a Heaven and Cage is looking down on us with that gentle yet mischievous smile of his, and he'd be pleased with this thread, especially the detractors who are the ones driving the discussion despite themselves. That's the point, that it's supposed to make you think.

I went to New York City with my wife and teenage son and we visited MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) and there was a gallery of concept art, and my wife was mystified by this big plastic ice cream cone that was on display. When she asked me, "Is this supposed to be art?"

I said, "Well, it's concept art." Then we went to and looked at Andy Warhol's _Campbell Soup_ paintings; again concept art, or "pop art." There was another painting called _Orange_ where the artist painted the whole canvas orange. And I guess the fact that I'm here talking about it, and the debate itself, is the point of it.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

consuono said:


> He could've simply written out that as a paragraph of prose rather than dressing it up as a musical piece, which, let's face it, it isn't.


Yes, he could have written a prose piece describing his thoughts, but it would not have had the same impact. I don't simply mean that it would not have led to decades of discussions such as this one. I believe many people, while aware that background sounds exist, almost never focus on them. I certainly do not.

As I said, I don't believe 4'33" is music, but I understand the argument for calling it music. It is performed as a musical work, a major publishing company has published the score as music, and it is listed as a musical work in books and internet sites that focus on classical music. So while I believe it is not music, I don't believe that it is _obviously_ not music.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Manxfeeder said:


> This was written in 1952, back when Zen was practiced on the fringes of New York society but was slowly making inroads into what was considered the underground. I don't think that at that point in time, introducing the concept of mindfulness to that audience at Woodstock would be considered condescending; rather, he would be attempting to open them up to a different type of experience. As far as execution, I don't think the performance had the ambient noise that he was expecting, so it probably was poorly executed.


I guess it's a someone-had-to-do-it thing then. If it opened up some people to a different perception, then that's great. I'd rather take my medicine another way (through the mouth, rather than through the r*ct*m as some might see it).


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

'Concept art makes you think'.... Or does it. Concept art is propaganda for the middle classes. It makes you turn off your inquisitive mind and it programs you with the artists direction of path he wants your thoughts to move in. 
Concept art is little more than cheap advertising skills.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> 'Concept art makes you think'.... Or does it. Concept art is propaganda for the middle classes. It makes you turn off your inquisitive mind and it programs you with the artists direction of path he wants your thoughts to move in.
> Concept art is little more than cheap advertising skills.


I'm still trying to understand what Cage meant by _4'33_, but the fact that you're aware of it, that you've processed it, that you've obviously spent a long time thinking about it, getting worked up about it, defined it, opposed yourself to it, and have become so invested in it (maybe, MORE invested in it than Cage himself ever was), demonstrates to me that whatever Cage was trying to do, he succeeded at it, or at least he succeeded at something.

I never praised _4'33"_ in any of my posts. I don't know what to make of it. All I can say to you is what I said to my wife at the Museum of Modern Art when we stopped to look at the giant ice cream cone: Well, it's concept art.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

The concept artist has made you think that the concept artist is valuable to your life and thoughts. That is pretty good self promotion advertising


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Take your wife to the utility room and show her the vacuum cleaner.... Tell her it will make her think.... You'll get the house cleaned as well.... Tell her that's performance art.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I've never given a rat's **** about the semantics issue of whether 4' 3'' is music or not. It's the message of taking a step back and being able to hear the music all around you and hear the music in everything. It's very profound. I could care less about the actual piece itself.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> The concept artist has made you think that the concept artist is valuable to your life and thoughts. That is pretty good self promotion advertising


But I never said that concept art was valuable or invaluable. It's interesting. That's all, at least for now. I don't feel as though I have to form a strong opinion of everything I see or hear. Do you?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

OK, once more into the breach, dear people.

Just some observations.

It was composed in 1952. Had it been composed in the 2000s, it would perhaps have been called 'mindfulness' or something like that: it certainly was ahead of its time in getting people to listen to the sounds around them (or in the case of my left ear, unfortunately, within it) and to focus on their place within an environment. And I think it would be applauded as an exercise in mindfulness (and quite possibly as a treatment for Type II diabetes and hypertension while we're at it. And I'm serious).

But, where I think it gets up some people's noses, is the name '4 minutes 33 seconds'. It is the pretension of those extra 33 seconds that really does it, I think. He allegedly wanted to write a piece of silence that lasted "3 or 4½ minutes" originally, because that was 'the standard length of "canned" music'. If he'd stuck at that, I think we'd be fine. But, the alleged precision of 4'3*3*" means, I think, some people are simply going to react with 'is he 'avving a laarf?!'.

In other words, I think the motivation fine; I think the observation on his part was also fine; and I also don't think the invitation for us to focus on our minds for a bit before a concert is a bad idea. But I think the alleged precision involved in its title invites a bit of derision. I think he'd have been much better off calling it 'Silent Prayer' as he originally envisaged.

Well, that's me done. I'm off out. (Well, not really: lock-down, you know. But I'm not hanging around for the bar-fights).


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Coach G said:


> But I never said that concept art was valuable or invaluable. It's interesting. That's all, at least for now. I don't feel as though I have to form a strong opinion of everything I see or hear. Do you?


No,I could quite easily ignore 4'33" for all eternity... I have ignored the 'concept' or work. 4'33" is no more important or less important than 2'39".... Except one has a name and marketing dept attached to it.... And let's be fair, we were all ignoring it until YOU asked the question....


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

It's possible that some of the heat generated by this piece relates to CM lovers who ask why it gets performed (how often I don't know) at the expense of other composers' works. Some sour grapes from budding composers too perhaps?


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

janxharris said:


> It's possible that some of the heat generated by this piece relates to CM lovers who ask why it gets performed (how often I don't know) at the expense of other composers' works. Some sour grapes from budding composers too perhaps?


Maybe that is the greater point of 4'33". Maybe what it is actually saying to young composers is "Until your work is considered more important than listening to nothing, Don't even think of getting your work played. Until your work is more marketable than 'nothing' don't waste our time"


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> Yes, he could have written a prose piece describing his thoughts, but it would not have had the same impact. I don't simply mean that it would not have led to decades of discussions such as this one. I believe many people, while aware that background sounds exist, almost never focus on them. I certainly do not.
> 
> As I said, I don't believe 4'33" is music, but I understand the argument for calling it music. It is performed as a musical work, a major publishing company has published the score as music, and it is listed as a musical work in books and internet sites that focus on classical music. So while I believe it is not music, I don't believe that it is _obviously_ not music.


I have been recently reminded that people are capable of believing and doing some very surprising things. It is well known that in the world of the arts, there are those with wild imaginations with a wide range of consequences from positive to real head-scratchers.

I understand 4'33" as having some kind of metaphorical meaning. Heck, I believed Julie Andrews when she sang 'the hills are alive with the sound of music'.  But if I came across a major publishing company's score of 4'33" and opened it to find a blank page or a few words with no sign of any notes, I would be snapped back to reality that this is _obviously not_ music.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Found this.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> View attachment 150904
> 
> 
> Found this.


So, honest question: do you actually hire parts? Is there actually copyright? Does one honestly open the score and then do nothing?

(I know there's a video. I'm just asking more generally).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

The score costs £9.95 from Edition Peters:

https://www.editionpeters.com/product/433/ep6777c


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Why do you think he insisted on an instrumentalists being part of a performance?


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Why do you think he insisted on an instrumentalists being part of a performance?


Guilt at creating it... So he ensured at least someone else picks up some money 
Though of course the real reason is obvious. Take away the performers and the pretentiousness disappears. It becomes just a 'normal working class silence'... You can't market that. You need classical musicians, bow ties and champagne.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Why do you think he insisted on an instrumentalists being part of a performance?


So the audience would focus on something and not just twiddle thumbs. Also so that it would be an integral part of a concert performance, not just the spare minutes that happen as we wait for the conductor to take the stage.

Basically to make the time significant, not incidental to other things.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

In case no one has said this (in this thread), 4'33" was premiered and "composed" for an outdoor evening performance at Tanglewood in the Berkshire "Mountains" of Massachusetts. The ambient sounds in that setting are undoubtedly worth a few minutes of close attention. Can't much see the point of doing it in a concert hall.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

4'33" is a total insult to people who are physically deaf. Deaf people would love to hear music but the work mocks them by proposing silence is music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So the audience would focus on something and not just twiddle thumbs. Also so that it would be an integral part of a concert performance, not just the spare minutes that happen as we wait for the conductor to take the stage.
> 
> Basically to make the time significant, not incidental to other things.


I think there's more to be said about this focus, he also broke it up into movements like a piano sonata.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> he also broke it up into movements like a piano sonata.


It still pales (in terms of "extra-musical" complexities) in comparison with Schulhoff's In Futurum, which predates Cage's 4'33" by 33 years 




specific instructions for hand postures to the performer: 









and again, look at the daringly complex use of notation:


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> 4'33" is a total insult to people who are physically deaf. Deaf people would love to hear music but the work mocks them by proposing silence is music.


That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day.


Explain that to a physically deaf person. They will find it insulting.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> Explain that to a physically deaf person. They will find it insulting.


Do you know any deaf people who have that opinion? Or are you saying that if _you_ were deaf, _you_ would feel insulted by 4'33"? You cannot speak for imaginary people.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> In case no one has said this (in this thread), 4'33" was premiered and "composed" for an outdoor evening performance at Tanglewood in the Berkshire "Mountains" of Massachusetts. The ambient sounds in that setting are undoubtedly worth a few minutes of close attention. Can't much see the point of doing it in a concert hall.


Here it says it was premiered in the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, in a more rural area. Ok, I have to take back that it was poorly concieved. So it may have been possible to hear birdsong, and wind in the trees, as Cage intended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_Concert_Hall


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ORigel said:


> Do you know any deaf people who have that opinion? Or are you saying that if _you_ were deaf, _you_ would feel insulted by 4'33"? You cannot speak for imaginary people.


Interesting that the earliest of the tiresome slew of "silent" pieces was _Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man_ (1897) by Alphonse Allais, 24 bars of silence. This was obviously meant as humor, though the humor-deprived disciples of Cage will insist that the latter's piece is not at all the same, due to the deep philosophical content of his work.

One can only recall the views of Karlheinz Klopweisser, who draws a distinction between French silence and German silence... :lol:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

KenOC said:


> French silence and German silence


Whatabout American silence?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

ORigel said:


> Do you know any deaf people who have that opinion? Or are you saying that if _you_ were deaf, _you_ would feel insulted by 4'33"? You cannot speak for imaginary people.


(1) If I was physically deaf, then I would be insulted by _4'33"_.
(2) My grandfather is significantly deaf. He longs to have the ability to listen to a Mozart concerto. He finds it insulting and frivolous that _4'33"_ by a "lunatic composer", as he described Cage.

I think Cage, if alive today, should owe deaf people a sensible apology.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Kudos to Cage. The piece is/was obviously extremely successful, given how (in)famous it is so many years after its performance.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Jacck said:


> Kudos to Cage. The piece is/was obviously extremely successful, given how (in)famous it is so many years after its performance.


Exactly, it's just a gimmick.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Where is the offence to those that cannot hear?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I think there's more to be said about this focus, he also broke it up into movements like a piano sonata.


Yup. I think that again is to emphasise that it's a 'real piece', deserving of attention, rather than just an extended silence which could be interpreted as 'what are we waiting for? What's going wrong back stage?' and so on.

I have no shares either way in whether that results in a good thing or a bad thing. But it strikes me that if you are keen on sharing your Zen understanding of the noise of silence, you'd want to do it in a formal way and setting, so that it doesn't get confused as 'mere pause'. So I don't have a problems with the trappings of a 'performance', in other words.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

For me the presence of the performer and the movements is saying that these 4 minutes are music, as much music as a conventional piano sonata.

I don't think it's about meditation or "Zen understanding of noise and silence." It would be nonsense to ask his audience to practice a meditation: they're not sitting correctly for that, they've not prepared the ground with relaxation, they've not been advised and informed about Zen etc. Indeed it would be more than nonsense, it would be an imposition. They are not Buddhists and they have expressed no interest in Buddhism. It would be as wrong for him to expect his audience to engage in Zen practice as it would be for a musician to ask his audience to proclaim _Allahu akbar._

The proposition of the piece is that the ambient sounds can be experienced in the same way as conventional music.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> The proposition of the piece is that the ambient sounds can be experienced in the same way as conventional music.


Would be very surprised if anyone needed to be 'told' this.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> For me the presence of the performer and the movements is saying that these 4 minutes are music, as much music as a conventional piano sonata.
> 
> I don't think it's about meditation or "Zen understanding of noise and silence." It would be nonsense to ask his audience to practice a meditation: they're not sitting correctly for that, they've not prepared the ground with relaxation, they've not been advised and informed about Zen etc. Indeed it would be more than nonsense, it would be an imposition. They are not Buddhists and they have expressed no interest in Buddhism. It would be as wrong for him to expect his audience to engage in Zen practice as it would be for a musician to ask his audience to proclaim _Allahu akbar._
> 
> The proposition of the piece is that the ambient sounds can be experienced in the same way as conventional music.


To me, it doesn't matter whether it's music or not, formally. The point is, he wants you to focus on it as a 'thing' that's deliberately happening, not something that happens by accident. Hence the formality and seriousness of purpose about its performance. I'm not getting into whether it's music or not, merely that he wants _this_ silence to be semantically different from _crickets_.

And incidentally, Britten on a couple of occasions asks his audience to sing Christian hymns (Noye's Fludde, St. Nicholas etc), without checking whether they're Christians or not before allowing them entry. It's not unheard of for composers to make demands of their audience along the lines you talk about. But that's a side issue. I mentioned the Zen thing in passing. It's not central to my point: deliberate, purposeful and serious silence v. accidental.

And yes, I'm well aware that his point is that what we trivially call silence is anything but.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The question is not whether the sounds in the 4 minutes make music. I think the question is whether they can be experienced in the same way as conventional music. That's to say, whether there is a distinct _way of listening_ which people engage in when they listen to music, and whether that way of listening can be applied in a performance of 4.33

I'm proposing that Cage's proposition in 4.33 is not primarily metaphysical or semantic, it is psychological and phenomenological. It is about ways of experiencing sound.


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## erki (Feb 17, 2020)

For me the piece is logical development of classical music in 20th century. Starting with DaDa throughout various explorations to expand the meaning of art(including music) as such. Very welcoming for me. The thought of being stuck in conventional compositions aka four centuries before that with known harmonies, scales etc makes me shiver. Thankfully it did not happen. And Cages 4:33 is landmark of that.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

erki said:


> For me the piece is logical development of classical music in 20th century. Starting with DaDa throughout various explorations to expand the meaning of art(including music) as such. Very welcoming for me. The thought of being stuck in conventional compositions aka four centuries before that with known harmonies, scales etc makes me shiver. Thankfully it did not happen. And Cages 4:33 is landmark of that.


One question is whether it can be taken anywhere or whether 4.33 is a dead end. Have you heard Francisco Lopez's _Presque Tout_?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> The question is not whether the sounds in the 4 minutes make music. I think the question is whether they can be experienced in the same way as conventional music. That's to say, whether there is a distinct _way of listening_ which people engage in when they listen to music, and whether that way of listening can be applied in a performance of 4.33
> 
> I'm proposing that Cage's proposition in 4.33 is not primarily metaphysical or semantic, it is psychological and phenomenological. It is about ways of experiencing sound.


I don't necessarily disagree with that last sentence.

My point can be expressed this (somewhat longwinded!) way. Is a piece of mass-produced porcelain sanitary-ware a work of art? Duchamp said, well, if I put in an art gallery, it's art, so there. Separate from that question of 'what is art', though, is this one: is it a valid thing for an artist to explore what makes the 'functional' different from the 'artistic'? Is it an interesting thing to make us look at the world around us differently? Yes, I'm sure it is: and by being provocative and challenging our assumptions, he makes an audience confront those questions. And because they are serious questions with interesting possibilities to work through, whether or not a porcelain urinal actually _is_ art, the artist has done his thoughtful, serious and purposeful job by even making us ask those questions. It makes us look at the world from a different perspective and ask ourselves things whose 'truth' we had been assuming all the while. Tracey Emin's bed in the Tate basically asks us the same questions, just 80 years late.

Now, Cage was a professional whose business was that of sound and sound manipulation, putting it at its crudest. Was it an important, serious and purposeful thing for him to have observed that in the quietest room on the planet, he could *still* hear something? Absolutely. And there's total validity, it seems to me, in him wanting to share that observation with audiences -and have them find it out for themselves- in a formal, purposeful and serious way in the context of a music concert. I think that experience has validity in itself, as an observation from a professional 'sound man'. I think it useful in making people 'look' (i.e., hear) at silence, noise, and the ambient sound-world they inhabit all the time in a way they probably have never done for themselves before. And thus it is a perfectly valid 'work of art', even without confronting the question, 'but is it music?'

Now, as I say, Duchamp basically said, if it's in an art gallery, it's art. Cage could well be saying, if it's in a concert hall, it's music. But those assertions don't _need_ to be resolved one way or another, it seems to me. It is enough to be able to appreciate the questions that, merely by presenting things in a new context, are posed by each of those artists.

If I assert that ambient noise is music, then I open myself up to definitional fights, in other words. If I merely assert that ambient noise is *interesting* and should be experienced in a serious and purposeful way, I don't think that's as fight-provocative but it *is* quite as artistically challenging.

I try not to bother myself with the definitional question, in other words. I'm much more interested in the 'situational' and 'experiential' challenge Cage poses us. I think that has meaning and significance all of its own, and is interesting _regardless_ of whether it actually counts as music or not.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Duchamp was wrong. Putting a cow in a stable doesn't make it a horse


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> Duchamp was wrong. Putting a cow in a stable doesn't make it a horse


Again, that's the definitional question I said was unimportant to answer.

Duchamp may indeed have been thinking, metaphorically, that a cow in a stable is a horse. And some of his audience might share his belief in that. But artistically, one needn't confront that question in order to be able to see and appreciate that a cow out of context is different from a cow in its normal context.

What Duchamp (or Cage) thought they were doing when they did what they did is less important, it seems to me, than our reactions to what they did, and what we think about our world as a result of what they did. Does making you listen to ambient noise in a focussed, purposeful and serious way make you _think_ differently about silence? About noise? About music? If it does, then it's done its job, whether or not its music. The definitional claims of the artists don't necessarily need to be _resolved_ by their audiences.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

You don't change a cow by putting it in a shed that is usually used for a horse. That"s like saying a beggar put in a posh hotel for a night becomes upper class.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I don't necessarily disagree with that last sentence.
> 
> My point can be expressed this (somewhat longwinded!) way. Is a piece of mass-produced porcelain sanitary-ware a work of art? Duchamp said, well, if I put in an art gallery, it's art, so there. Separate from that question of 'what is art', though, is this one: is it a valid thing for an artist to explore what makes the 'functional' different from the 'artistic'? Is it an interesting thing to make us look at the world around us differently? Yes, I'm sure it is: and by being provocative and challenging our assumptions, he makes an audience confront those questions. And because they are serious questions with interesting possibilities to work through, whether or not a porcelain urinal actually _is_ art, the artist has done his thoughtful, serious and purposeful job by even making us ask those questions. It makes us look at the world from a different perspective and ask ourselves things whose 'truth' we had been assuming all the while. Tracey Emin's bed in the Tate basically asks us the same questions, just 80 years late.
> 
> ...


Yes. I can see that. I would say that Duchamp was also making a psychological and phenomenological point about ways of looking.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> You don't change a cow by putting it in a shed that is usually used for a horse. That"s like saying a beggar put in a posh hotel for a night becomes upper class.


Yeah, you clearly haven't read what I actually wrote, so further discussion with you is pointless.

You are straining at the definitions of 'what is a cow', 'what is a horse', when those are the least interesting results from putting a cow in a stable.

Over and out.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Yes. I can see that. I would say that Duchamp was also making a psychological and phenomenological point about ways of looking.


I agree.Though I try not to throw the word 'phenomenological' around too often, as it brings back nightmares about Hegel.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I agree.Though I try not to throw the word 'phenomenological' around too often, as it brings back nightmares about Hegel.


Surely not nightmares about Charles Taylor's book.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Surely not nightmares about Charles Taylor's book.


Don't quite get that reference, sorry. No, I meant nightmares about Hegel, when studying him for my third year History degree. Shudder... My tutor said I was the only one to have actually understood the _Phenomenology of Spirit_ that year, but he was perhaps just being kind, because I didn't particularly feel I'd understood a damn thing!

ETA: Got you. No, not the biography of him.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Don't quite get that reference, sorry. No, I meant nightmares about Hegel, when studying him for my third year History degree. Shudder... My tutor said I was the only one to have actually understood the _Phenomenology of Spirit_ that year, but he was perhaps just being kind, because I didn't particularly feel I'd understood a damn thing!
> 
> ETA: Got you. No, not the biography of him.


You think Hegel did?


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

To me 4'33" is a pointless, if not silly, exercise. I've been enjoying some kinds of noises such as the sound of rain, of childrens laughing, of the animals in a forest etc. much before I knew any 4'33", and I think that most other people also did. And although I can agree that noise can be pleasant and that it definitely _can_ be used in a musical manner, I believe that Cage was totally off the mark thinking that noise and music are actually the same thing. To me, a person who says that "everything we do is music" does not know what music is, or at least what it isn't, and shouldn't really be taken seriously in any discussion about it.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> To me 4'33" is a pointless, if not silly, exercise. I've been enjoying some kinds of noises such as the sound of rain, of childrens laughing, of the animals in a forest etc. much before I knew any 4'33", and I think that most other people also did. And although I can agree that noise can be pleasant and that it definitely _can_ be used in a musical manner, I believe that Cage was totally off the mark thinking that noise and music are the same thing. To me, a person who says that "everything we do is music" clearly does not know what music is and shouldn't really be taken seriously in any discussion about it.


You are missing the point of 4'33" and John Cage. He does not equate music with noise, what he has said was _he is able to enjoy_, for example, the sound of traffic as much, maybe even more, than listening to a work by Beethoven. Because (*and this is his preoccupation)* with Beethoven he is always aware of the intention, the ego, driving every note in the music - but with traffic, or any other environmental sound, he can simply appreciate the sounds as themselves.

He does not prescribe this for everyone and makes no value judgment about music vs. noise - he is stating a personal preference of his own.

Now, regarding 4'33" Cage has said he first got the idea when he was in an office building and was aware of the Muzak being piped in everywhere, around 1947-1948. He immediately thought how nice four minutes of silence would be, since four minutes seemed to be the average length of the songs on Muzak: "_to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be three or four-and-a-half minutes long-those being the standard lengths of "canned" music and its title will be Silent Prayer_."

Then about four years went by and he kept that idea in his head but was unsure about actually premiering the work since he knew it would be controversial. Then he went to an "anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than reflecting them as echoes. Such a chamber is also externally sound-proofed" but realized that even in that environment he heard the sounds of his body - there was no actual silence.

Combined with his appreciation of environmental sounds, the awareness that true absolute silence does not exist in our world and after seeing the _White Paintings_ by Robert Rasuchenberg in 1952, he decided the time was ripe to perform 4'33".

Cage created the score: three sections marked with a time duration and the instruction "Tacit" (do not play) for each section. David Tudor performed the piece and indicated the different sections by raising and lowering the piano keyboard cover. So the work is not just about appreciating the sounds around us, Cage framed the "environmental silence" with specific performance instructions, and put the performer on stage and presented this opportunity to the audience to listen to the accidental sounds as a concert work.

*It is the framing and contextualizing of the silence* that is integral part of the work.

You may not like 4'33", but it was not an offhand thing that Cage just threw out there for a laugh. There was real thought behind it. But you need not pay attention to it - it does no harm to anyone by existing. There are plenty of people who understand what Cage was about and enjoy performances of 4'33". This is no different than any work, which some people enjoy more than others, and some people actually might dislike.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Allerius said:


> To me 4'33" is a pointless, if not silly, exercise. I've been enjoying some kinds of noises such as the sound of rain, of childrens laughing, of the animals in a forest etc. much before I knew any 4'33", and I think that most other people also did. And although I can agree that noise can be pleasant and that it definitely _can_ be used in a musical manner, I believe that Cage was totally off the mark thinking that noise and music are actually the same thing. To me, a person who says that "everything we do is music" does not know what music is, or at least what it isn't, and shouldn't really be taken seriously in any discussion about it.


So my first question is, where did Cage state that "noise and music are actually the same thing"?

If he did, fine. But I'm unaware of him saying that.

And my second question, if someone tells you the sky is dark lime green with yellow spots, do you have to believe him before you look up just to check and make sure?

In other words, the artist's_ claim_ for a work (assuming he made such a claim: see Question 1) does not mandate that you have to accept those claims before you nevertheless appreciate the work for what you find it to be.

For the rest, SanAntone said it better than I could: it is the purposeful framing of "silence" that counts, not the silence itself.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So my first question is, where did Cage state that "noise and music are actually the same thing"?
> 
> If he did, fine. But I'm unaware of him saying that.


See what you think of this


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Some composers are better off writing nothing...


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> You are missing the point of 4'33" and John Cage. He does not equate music with noise, what he has said was _he is able to enjoy_, for example, the sound of traffic as much, maybe even more, than listening to a work by Beethoven. Because (*and this is his preoccupation)* with Beethoven he is always aware of the intention, the ego, driving every note in the music - but with traffic, or any other environmental sound, he can simply appreciate the sounds as themselves.
> 
> He does not prescribe this for everyone and makes no value judgment about music vs. noise - he is stating a personal preference of his own.
> 
> ...





AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So my first question is, where did Cage state that "noise and music are actually the same thing"?
> 
> If he did, fine. But I'm unaware of him saying that.
> 
> ...


Too much talk, too less content. People go to a concert hall to hear music. If Cage makes a "piece" that ought to be "played" in a concert hall but that actually is about silence - actually, the absence of it, this is, the noise that we hear when we try to "hear" silence - then I think that it's fair to expect that he is implying that noise and silence are the same thing, for I went to that concert to hear music, and someone is "playing" 4'33"! If his point was just to show us how much he loves traffic noise better than Mozart and Beethoven, but that it's not music, then he could just _say_ it, or maybe write a book about his preference, not "perform" it as his "piece" in a concert hall where people are supposed to _hear music_ - that is pointless in my view.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> Too much talk, too less content. People go to a concert hall to hear music. If Cage makes a "piece" that ought to be "played" in a concert hall but that actually is about silence - actually, the absence of it, this is, the noise that we hear when we try to "hear" silence - then I think that it's fair to expect that he is implying that noise and silence are the same thing, for I went to that concert to hear music, and someone is "playing" 4'33"! If his point was just to show us how much he loves traffic noise better than Mozart and Beethoven, but that it's not music, then he could just _say_ it, or maybe write a book about his preference, not "perform" it in a concert hall where people are supposed to _hear music_ - that is pointless in my view.


Okay, so what? Do you think that your view should dictate what the response to 4'33" should be for everyone? Because it won't. I will still retain my respect for what Cage did, irrespective of your view.

People go to concerts for a number of reasons - some go to hear 4'33". Not you, of course. But there have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of concerts of 4'33". I guess you just don't get it. No big deal, I don't get the attraction of Wagner. Maybe Wagner is your favorite composer. "Que sera, sera."

Which is why this endless debating 4'33" has become pointless on TC.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Okay, so what? Do you think that your view should influence anyone else?


I understand that the point of a thread called _"What are your thoughts on 4'33" by John Cage?"_ is for people to show their views about it, no? I just did it, like everybody else. But if somehow I influence someone, I think that it's not bad, because, as I said, I think that 4'33" is pointless, and in a hundred years I expect it to be just another curiosity for connoisseurs.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Thank you for that. Let's just pull that apart, because I'm not entirely sure it's coherent!

_"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking [about his feelings or his ideas of relationships]. But when I hear the sound of traffic, here on Sixth Avenue, for instance, I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound … I don't need sound to talk to me"._

So, music=talking, and sound != talking. Therefore music <> sound. And since the sound he's talking about is the traffic on Sixth Avenue, traffic 'noise' is not music.

_"When I talk about music, it finally comes to people's minds that I'm talking about sound that doesn't mean anything. And they say that, these people who finally understand that, they say, 'You mean it's just sounds?', thinking that for something just to be sound is to be useless. Whereas I love sounds, just as they are and I have no need for them to be anything more than just what they are. I don't need sound to pretend it's a bucket or that it's a President or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound."_

So 'meaningless sound' (which I assume we can call 'noise'?) doesn't pretend, whereas music does pretend to be things. Therefore, again, music and noise are not the same things.

_"The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence. And the silence almost everywhere in the world now is traffic [...] and it's always different."_

And there he's saying, silence=traffic. Which is the same thing we all agree on, I think, that "silence" doesn't mean "complete absence of sound".

I'm not sure where that leaves us (except with a profound understanding that Cage loved and was cruel to cats, who -happily- took their bitey revenge!)


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Why do you think he insisted on an instrumentalists being part of a performance?


Because it's concept art. The concept required a trained musician to emphasize that it is supposed to be music. So if you had a truck driver, or a plumber, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, sitting at the piano, who is a non-musician, the concept doesn't work unless. It's like a movie cameo where a famous person doesn't really do anything except be famous; the joke wouldn't work if they just grabbed an ordinary person off the street.

Though John Cage employed sounds that were supposed to be random happenings (indeterminacy), he was very definite about the parameters he set within a piece. So when he composed the pieces for 20 radios going all at once, he determined the frequencies and the timing that each player would change frequencies by chance operations (the roll of dice, the I Ching, etc); but when he instructed the players as to what frequencies they should play and at what times they would change frequencies, he told them to be careful not to "mess up."


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Thank you for that. Let's just pull that apart, because I'm not entirely sure it's coherent!
> 
> _"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking [about his feelings or his ideas of relationships]. But when I hear the sound of traffic, here on Sixth Avenue, for instance, I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound … I don't need sound to talk to me"._
> 
> ...


Thanks for that post.
It made me sad.
What he seemed to be saying was so nihilistic. He wasn't saying that he liked unconsidered sounds for themselves; he was liking them precisely because of their lack of meaning.
From your summary he seemed to be equating an attempt to contain meaning in an utterance with pretence. How sad? I hope he was happier than that.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Coach G said:


> Because it's concept art. The concept required a trained musician to emphasize that it is supposed to be music. So if you had a truck driver, or a plumber, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, sitting at the piano, who is a non-musician, the concept doesn't work unless. It's like a movie cameo where a famous person doesn't really do anything except be famous; the joke wouldn't work if they just grabbed an ordinary person off the street.
> 
> It is nothing but elitist middle class arty nonsense...... the working classes are not fooled by this kind of junk.... the middle classes love it


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So my first question is, where did Cage state that "noise and music are actually the same thing"?


"Everything we do is music," Cage once said. "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 miles an hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects but as musical instruments." - Source here.

I think that when Cage says "everything we do is music" in the context above, he is implying that noise is music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

WhateverDude said:


> It is nothing but elitist middle class arty nonsense...... the working classes are not fooled by this kind of junk.... the middle classes love it


Are you aware of Ultra-Red's appropriation of 4.33 to raise Aids awareness?

http://www.pomoculture.org/2015/07/28/the-limits-of-performing-cage-ultra-reds-silentlisten1/


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

The above quote is an error. I didn't say that. Whateverdude did.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> Coach G said:
> 
> 
> > Because it's concept art. The concept required a trained musician to emphasize that it is supposed to be music. So if you had a truck driver, or a plumber, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, sitting at the piano, who is a non-musician, the concept doesn't work unless. It's like a movie cameo where a famous person doesn't really do anything except be famous; the joke wouldn't work if they just grabbed an ordinary person off the street.
> ...


Well, you've screwed your quotation tags, so that might be something to fix.

As a signed-up member of the working class (father sold tickets on British Rail, grandmother sold tickets on the (literally) Clapham Omnibus), I don't need lessons about what the working classes think or are fooled by. Seriously, if that's the best you can come up with, I'd be looking for a new gig.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Allerius said:


> "Everything we do is music," Cage once said. "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 miles an hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects but as musical instruments." - Source here.
> 
> I think that when Cage says "everything we do is music" in the context above, he is implying that noise is music.


I've explained quite carefully why that equation doesn't work, given his actual words in a video. Also, try not to link to things which are behind pay-walls. It doesn't help your case when we can't actually find out what the hell it is you've linked to! Also remember that some US websites don't like visitors from the EU (or East-Pond) because of privacy concerns stemming from the GDPR. Short version: I cannot see what it is you think you linked to.

Additionally, always remember that what the artist *claims* is NOT what you have to buy into to get meaning out of what the artist *does*.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Allerius said:


> "Everything we do is music," Cage once said. "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 miles an hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects but as musical instruments." - Source here.
> 
> I think that when Cage says "everything we do is music" in the context above, he is implying that noise is music.


But surely can one still appreciate the intrinsic attribute of sounds without getting dragged into the semantics debate as to whether it's 'music'? If I were to indulge in that debate, this is what I would say: I love so many sounds that are just abundant in our surroundings, birdsong, rain, rivers and creeks, wind, motorcycle engines running, etc. etc. etc. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's 'music' pe se because it's not organized sound that was premeditated and composed/constructed with the intent of making a product. While something chaotic like free jazz isn't what you would call "organized", in a way its organized because it was deliberately put together by people into a product.

So while from a technical standpoint, I don't believe the sound of a trickling creek is "music"...but at the risk of sounding corny, I think there's "music" to be found in your surroundings and in all the subtle things in life if you listen closely. I've always firmly believed that's what Cage was trying to say. Not "music" from a semantic, textbook definition, but finding beauty and aesthetic appreciation in sound.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I've explained quite carefully why that equation doesn't work, given his actual words in a video. Also, try not to link to things which are behind pay-walls. It doesn't help your case when we can't actually find out what the hell it is you've linked to! Also remember that some US websites don't like visitors from the EU (or East-Pond) because of privacy concerns stemming from the GDPR. Short version: I cannot see what it is you think you linked to.
> 
> Additionally, always remember that what the artist *claims* is NOT what you have to buy into to get meaning out of what the artist *does*.


I fail to see how John Cage having an expansive view of what could be included in the idea of "music" is a problem for anyone else. We all can choose to hear whatever we want to hear as music. John Cage has said that he can listen to traffic and enjoy it.

I wish I could. My neighbor's parties would not have been such a bother.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Also, try not to link to things which are behind pay-walls. It doesn't help your case when we can't actually find out what the hell it is you've linked to! Also remember that some US websites don't like visitors from the EU (or East-Pond) because of privacy concerns stemming from the GDPR. Short version: I cannot see what it is you think you linked to.


Here is the full article:

_American Composers: John Cage
The Avatar of Avant

By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 1998; Page G01

John Cage Composer John Cage (1912-1992). (Courtesy of Albion Records)
Only a handful of his works will survive; moreover, he wrote virtually nothing of intrinsic musical merit in his last 40 years. Still, John Cage (1912-1992) was one of the most significant and influential of all American composers, and it is impossible to imagine musical life in the late 20th century without him. For good and for ill, Cage broke the barriers.
"Everything we do is music," Cage once said. "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 miles an hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects but as musical instruments."

His most famous composition -- "4'33" " (1952) -- required no instruments whatsoever. The performer was simply instructed to sit silently onstage for the duration of the piece -- 4 minutes 33 seconds -- while the audience listened to whatever sounds were taking place around it. (Seventeen years later, when John Lennon included two minutes of silence on one of his experimental records, one critic called the Cage work "a much better piece.")

Cage was also the inventor of the "prepared piano" -- a standard-issue piano that was completely transfigured, with the help of nuts, bolts, screws, erasers, rubber bands and other material placed between its strings. The idea sounds like a Dada stunt ("C'mon kids, let's see how much junk we can fit into a piano!") but the resulting instrument was surprisingly exciting and effective, sounding rather like a percussion orchestra.

By the end of his life, Cage had come to seem the living embodiment of the avant-garde. And as was so often the case with avant-garde composers, Cage found his initial following outside the music world -- among choreographers, visual artists, aestheticians, philosophers and young intellectuals. Many people in the formal music community considered him a joke, particularly when he first came to fame. Later on, however, he developed a strong following among young composers -- virtually none of whom wrote music that sounded anything like his own.

And that, of course, was exactly the point. "Cage gave us permission to be ourselves," Philip Glass said in 1992. "He created the idea of a personal music, outside the traditional rules. With his own life, with his own work, he created an epic -- no, make that an epoch. He was a tremendously liberating force."

What was it about California in the first half of the 20th century? Cage was only one of a number of maverick figures, all obsessed with pure sound, who came from the Los Angeles basin during that time period. (Some others include Harry Partch, with his homemade instruments and esoteric tunings; Spike Jones, of the ferociously subversive and innovative big-band recordings; and Brian Wilson, the abstracted, introverted genius who created the Beach Boys.)

Cage was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 5, 1912; appropriately, he was the son of an inventor. He studied the piano as a young man and attended Los Angeles High School, where he distinguished himself in Latin and oratory, and he was one of 13 students honored by the faculty for their "scholarship, leadership and character." He attended Pomona College in Claremont for two years, and then studied art, architecture and music during a term in Europe, following that with composition studies in New York with Arnold Weiss and Henry Cowell.

After returning to California, he attended UCLA, where he worked with Arnold Schoenberg, who informed his unconventional student that he was not really a composer so much as "an inventor of genius." In 1938, Cage joined Bonnie Bird's dance troupe in Seattle, where he served as accompanist and composer. There he met the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, his closest personal and professional associate, who would live with him for much of his life.

Cage presented the first full evening of his music at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1943. "About 40 kinds of instruments were employed, ranging from thundersheets and a 'string piano' to cowbells, flower pots and even an audio-frequency generator," the New York Times reported. "But practically all the 'music' produced by the various combinations of them had an inescapable resemblance to the meaningless sounds made by children amusing themselves by banging on tin pans and other resonant kitchen utensils."

In fact, Cage's early music was and remains delightful -- brash, witty, energetic and filled with ideas and intelligence. Sometimes it is also ethereally beautiful; "In a Landscape" for solo piano seems a sort of smart, pristine New Age music, written 40 years before that generally lamentable genre began to ooze from speakers everywhere.

By the late 1940s, Cage had completed an early masterpiece, the hour-long Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano. This is strange and engrossing noisemaking, not to be forgotten; had the composer wanted to be pretentious, he might have titled this "The Well-Prepared Piano," for it is a unified suite of 16 "sonatas" (none of them more than a few minutes long) and four interludes that explore the ad-hoc instrument from many different vantage points.

The Sonatas & Interludes were written at a time when Cage was just becoming interested in Zen philosophy. Within five years, his music changed radically. He began to incorporate chance elements into his work. In one piece, pitches, durations and timbres were determined not by any conscious decision on the part of the composer, but rather by making use of charts derived from the I Ching and then throwing three coins. Another piece, "Imaginary Landscape No. 4," was written for 12 radios and two performers, one person manipulating the frequency knobs while the other played with the volume controls. Although the notation was precise, the resulting sounds varied wildly from performance to performance, depending on what was on the air at any given time.

In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music -- that we were not limited to voice and traditional instruments alone to create a musical composition. This was unquestionably an important realization. Unfortunately, he took this line of thinking a little further and decided that all noise was music, which is a different proposition altogether. He argued repeatedly that any sound was just as good as another; many of Cage's late works were so "indeterminate" as to be virtually random.

And so the quality of Cage's work declined sharply. How could it have been otherwise? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no valuable work of art is ever random, unless the artist is very, very lucky. (Think of all those fabled monkeys jumping on their typewriters that will, statisticians assure us, ultimately produce "War and Peace.") Composition is the art of choosing and arranging pitches, rhythms and sounds into a musical unity -- it's as simple as that. If a composer abdicates this responsibility, it must be made up for by other people, whether the performers or credulous audiences.

But the damage was done, and suddenly Cage was a Deep Thinker. And so one of our most playful and original composers relinquished his craft and became an oracle -- a benign, grinning presence, a sort of musical Andy Warhol, always good for the cosmic giggle, the elliptical quote.

It became a truism to suggest that Cage's ideas were stronger than his works. And sometimes his ideas were in fact important. In "433," for example, he was suggesting that a work of music could be anything at all, even nothing; he was paying homage to silence, which is much taken for granted within the musical hierarchy; he was offering an oblique comment on the sort of highly organized music that was then fashionable in Europe; and, finally, he was indulging his own puckish sense of humor. But what actually happened in the sounding music? Well nothing, really -- nothing at all.

I observed the latter part of Cage's career with a bemused mixture of skepticism and wonder. In one performance, he sat on the side of the stage reading aloud in a dispassionate voice while dancers stretched their muscles and scenery was arranged and rearranged around him. Another time, he fed vegetables into an amplified food processor and put a microphone on his stomach to catch the sound of his own gastric juices. One piano piece, "Etudes Australes" (1974-75), was little more than the musical translation of a tracing of astronomical charts onto scored music paper -- interesting idea, but a lousy piece, as it would have had to be.

In person, Cage was a gentle, soft-spoken man who dressed unusually informally, even by the studiedly sloppy standards of downtown Manhattan; I cannot envision him in anything but his old plaid flannel shirts and jeans, with a large, happy and childlike smile on his face. And yet, in the early 1970s, he became infatuated with the brutal philosophies of Mao Zedong -- this despite his own sweet nature and professed anarchism. Moreover, he continued to argue that every sound was as good as another -- that all value judgments were wrong -- yet he was an expert mycologist and knew full well that one form of mushroom would make a dinner while another might just make a corpse.

Perhaps Cage might have answered with Walt Whitman's words: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." And, as one of his strongest and most persuasive defenders, the composer and critic Kyle Gann, has pointed out in his new book "American Music in the Twentieth Century," "despite Cage's rejection of self-expression in his music, he opened up a new, freer attitude toward self-expression for composers who came after him. A cheerful lecturer who could deflect anger and incomprehension with humor and calm, Cage became a father figure to younger generations."

Even composers who actively dislike much of Cage's music have found it difficult to escape his influence. One example is Steve Reich, who has made no secret of his impatience with Cage's later work, but might not have been moved to create his own early conceptual pieces for tape recorder, such as "It's Gonna Rain" (1965), without the example of Cage's own music for tape like "Williams Mix" (1952) and the later "Fontana Mix" (1958). Other examples abound. And think of all the digital sampling of everyday sounds in contemporary popular music, much of it created by people who may never have heard of Cage.

Once Schoenberg was instructing the young Cage in counterpoint, a fundamental skill for any composer. Cage offered many solutions to the problem his teacher posed, but Schoenberg kept asking for yet another answer. "Finally I said -- not at all sure of myself -- that there weren't any more solutions," Cage told me in 1985. "He told me I was correct. Then he asked what the principle underlying all the solutions was. I couldn't answer. This happened in 1935 and it would be at least 15 more years before I could answer his question. Now I would answer that the principle underlying all of our solutions is the question we ask."

Even if we reject some of his answers, our musical life is much the richer for Cage's questions.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company_


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Does this utter fake John Cage get any royalties from people doing nothing... sounds like the ultimate con trick


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> Here is the full article:
> 
> American Composers: John Cage
> The Avatar of Avant
> ...


It is sad that all you got from that article was that one quote, as if you are proving something. It is a quote of Cage describing his philosophy of music and sound. Is he not allowed to express his expansive view of what music can be?

The rest of the article is almost laudatory, certainly respectful.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Allerius said:


> Here is the full article:


OK. Thanks for that. It didn't need to be the full article, nor did it need to be green (some of us might be red/green colour blind). The nub of it comes down to:

_"Everything we do is music," Cage once said. "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 miles an hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects but as musical instruments."_

So, no he's _explicitly not_ saying music=noise. He's saying 'we want to control noise _as though it were_ a musical _instrument_'. Which, of course, is exactly the premise of 4'33". It's not music=noise, but that noise should be manipulated _as if it were_ musical in nature.

It could well be that there's more in your green quote that goes to your point, but you'll have to edit and focus, rather than splurdge an entire wall of text and expect others to do so.

But thank you for salvaging the information from behind the paywall for us (sincerely).


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

If people are going to insist that 4’33” is a musical work, why is it that it is being discussed as if it’s classical music. If one is in the middle of a busy city, it could just as easily be rap.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> It is sad that all you got from that article was that one quote, as if you are proving something. It is a quote of Cage describing his philosophy of music and sound. Is he not allowed to express his expansive view of what music can be?
> 
> The rest of the article is almost laudatory, certainly respectful.


It's even sadder that you thought to quote the entire damn thing in order to refute it! Walls of green text are not good. Please go and do some pruning!


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

DaveM said:


> If people are going to insist that 4'33" is a musical work, why is it that it is being discussed as if it's classical music. If one is in the middle of a busy city, it could just as easily be rap.


No-one in the last few pages has claimed, let alone insisted, that it is a musical work.

I don't know how often I need to repeat: whether it's music *or not* makes no difference. If it makes us listen to noise, music and silence _differently_, it's done its job as a work of art and deserves to be regarded seriously in consequence.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> I fail to see how John Cage having an expansive view of what could be included in the idea of "music" is a problem for anyone else. We all can choose to hear whatever we want to hear as music.


But, I think, his point is NOT that one has to, or can choose to, hear whatever we want as music. His point, I think, is merely to make you listen.

Whether what you hear is noise, annoyance, music, or the sweet tinkling of water in a stream that means nothing more than water tinkling in a stream... it doesn't _matter_. He's made you listen to it. For him, that's the job done. He doesn't need to claim it's music. No-one need claim it's music. It's art, because in a serious and formal setting, he's made you stop and _listen_, in a way you do not casually do whilst out for a walk in the woods.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> It is sad that all you got from that article was that one quote, as if you are proving something. It is a quote of Cage describing his philosophy of music and sound. Is he not allowed to express his expansive view of what music can be?
> 
> The rest of the article is almost laudatory, certainly respectful.


_In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music -- that we were not limited to voice and traditional instruments alone to create a musical composition. This was unquestionably an important realization. Unfortunately, he took this line of thinking a little further and decided that all noise was music, which is a different proposition altogether. He argued repeatedly that any sound was just as good as another; many of Cage's late works were so "indeterminate" as to be virtually random._

This paragraph is the essence to me, and I think that it shows the reason why I don't take Cage seriously as a composer. Note that the Washington Post's writer is also critical of him in the following paragraph:

_And so the quality of Cage's work declined sharply. How could it have been otherwise? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no valuable work of art is ever random, unless the artist is very, very lucky. (Think of all those fabled monkeys jumping on their typewriters that will, statisticians assure us, ultimately produce "War and Peace.") Composition is the art of choosing and arranging pitches, rhythms and sounds into a musical unity -- it's as simple as that. If a composer abdicates this responsibility, it must be made up for by other people, whether the performers or credulous audiences._



AbsolutelyBaching said:


> It's even sadder that you thought to quote the entire damn thing in order to refute it! Walls of green text are not good. Please go and do some pruning!


Sorry for the green wall, I thought that it was actually a good solution to highlight quoted texts. Is blue any better?


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> Does this utter fake John Cage get any royalties from people doing nothing... sounds like the ultimate con trick


Cage did a lot of other things. He had his hands in music, visual arts, performance art, cinema, poetry, chess, and mycology. _4'33"_ is only one thing that Cage did and he was known for much more. Did you hear the _String Quartet in Four Parts_, _Imaginary Landscape_, or the _Sonatas for Prepared Piano_? Cage's musical philosophy has had an impact on musicians as varied as Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Turo Takemitsu, Frank Zappa, and Yoko Ono. Lou Harrison and Alan Hovhaness were friends with Cage, and the avant-garde jazz great, Sun Ra and his "Arkestra", made an album with John Cage; the only time Sun Ra ever recorded with a White man. I'd say that the legacy speaks for itself.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Allerius said:


> In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music


I really wish you'd stop using colour to mean things, and instead use things like italic and bold and the quote tags to do the job.

That aside. What you are doing is quoting reported speech. They are someone else's words, not Cage's. End of, really. Since Cage didn't say it, but your blue/green reporter did, they are your reporters assumptions and assertions, not Cage's.

Nothing further need be said. If you can find Cage saying music=noise, or vice versa, I'll be interested.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music -- that we were not limited to voice and traditional instruments alone to create a musical composition. This was unquestionably an important realization. Unfortunately, he took this line of thinking a little further and decided that all noise was music, which is a different proposition altogether. He argued repeatedly that any sound was just as good as another; many of Cage's late works were so "indeterminate" as to be virtually random.
> 
> This paragraph is the essence to me, and I think that it highlights the reason why I don't take Cage seriously as a composer. Note that the Washington Post writer is also critical of him in the following paragraph:
> 
> And so the quality of Cage's work declined sharply. How could it have been otherwise? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no valuable work of art is ever random, unless the artist is very, very lucky. (Think of all those fabled monkeys jumping on their typewriters that will, statisticians assure us, ultimately produce "War and Peace.") Composition is the art of choosing and arranging pitches, rhythms and sounds into a musical unity -- it's as simple as that. If a composer abdicates this responsibility, it must be made up for by other people, whether the performers or credulous audiences.


Well, you have your opinion, Page has his opinion, and Cage has his opinion. I don't get why you are so invested in what Cage thought about music and noise? Further, there are many, man y, people who do enjoy his music, do not agree that the quality went down in his later works, and consider his final period of Number Pieces to be some of his greatest works.

I just don't get what the big bru-ha-ha is all about. Every composer decides for himself how he will approach creating his music. Cage had a more inclusive idea of what musical composition could be, what sounds could be included in a musical composition - and as I have said, his music has been performed countless times. In fact his publisher (Edition Peters) has said that John Cage's scores are the biggest revenue producer among their contemporary composer collection.

You act as if by quoting his words you are indicting him of some crime.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Allerius said:


> In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music -- that we were not limited to voice and traditional instruments alone to create a musical composition. This was unquestionably an important realization. Unfortunately, he took this line of thinking a little further and decided that all noise was music, which is a different proposition altogether. He argued repeatedly that any sound was just as good as another; many of Cage's late works were so "indeterminate" as to be virtually random.
> 
> This paragraph is the essence to me, and I think that it shows the reason why I don't take Cage seriously as a composer. Note that the Washington Post's writer is also critical of him in the following paragraph:
> 
> ...


Sorry to be curmudgeonly about it, but no not really (I replied earlier).

It's really best not to muck with fonts and/or colour. Italic, bold, quotations are all fine. When all else fails, I resort to UPPER CASE and maybe asterisks around key words.

But you do you: I'm not telling you what to do or not to do. We each have to find our own way through this stuff! I just saw green and blank out, I'm afraid. The blue just draws attention to itself away from what you're saying about it. Sorry. I am not great with colour (says the man who sees dark blue when it's a C major chord. Go figure).

I just wanted to add that I cannot _stand_ Cage's music. I just think that 4'33" is an interesting work of art, for what it makes us confront (about our understanding and expectations of music, concerts, silence, ambient noise). It doesn't need to do anything more than that to be quite clever, I think.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Let's be fair, Cage wrote nothing of any importance.... so he wrote 'nothing' ...4'33" of nothing


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> No-one in the last few pages has claimed, let alone insisted, that it is a musical work.
> 
> *I don't know how often I need to repeat*: whether it's music *or not* makes no difference. If it makes us listen to noise, music and silence _differently_, it's done its job as a work of art and deserves to be regarded seriously in consequence.


Excellent point, AbsolutelyBaching. But I have made exactly the same point here at TC, as have many others. I have also pointed out, as have many others, that Cage wrote other pieces, including some for conventional western musical instruments, played in conventional (or unconventional, but still audible) ways, that might further illuminate his ideas for the interested listener. Perhaps you too have made that point here before.

So I think we can safely conclude that no amount of repeating these points will convince anyone who is not already convinced, or interest anyone who is not already interested. Thus, you and I can leave these 4'33" debates and move on to other topics, secure in the knowledge that we have done our best.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Allerius said:


> _In the first part of his creative life, Cage had learned that noise could be music -- that we were not limited to voice and traditional instruments alone to create a musical composition. This was unquestionably an important realization. Unfortunately, he took this line of thinking a little further and decided that all noise was music, which is a different proposition altogether. He argued repeatedly that any sound was just as good as another; many of Cage's late works were so "indeterminate" as to be virtually random._
> 
> This paragraph is the essence to me, and I think that it shows the reason why I don't take Cage seriously as a composer. Note that the Washington Post's writer is also critical of him in the following paragraph:


Most of his music is not random. As far as I know all the number pieces are not random, for example.

In fact, the recording I love the most of Cage's compositions is a performance of Variations II, which _is _random. The thing to bear in mind is that even though the score is constructed from chance operations, the performers still have a duty to make it into poetry -- to use all the usual stuff to do with colour, rubato etc to make the experience of listening valuable. In this case (they use some gorgeous flutes) they succeed.

I'll also mention something which is I think fascinating. I am not sure I could tell, without knowing, that Boulez's Structures 1a is constructed in a different way from Cage's Music of Changes. The Cage is more or less made with chance operations, the Boulez is totally composed, every note has been planned with a scheme -- at least as much as in music by Beethoven and Bach. I think it's fascinating that two diametrically opposed approaches to composition could sound so similar.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Imagine thinking no one listened to the sound of the birds or the sound of the city or countryside before Cage introduced us to it.... what utter middle class arty pretention.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Coach G said:


> Because it's concept art. The concept required a trained musician to emphasize that it is supposed to be music. So if you had a truck driver, or a plumber, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, sitting at the piano, who is a non-musician, the concept doesn't work unless. It's like a movie cameo where a famous person doesn't really do anything except be famous; the joke wouldn't work if they just grabbed an ordinary person off the street.
> 
> Though John Cage employed sounds that were supposed to be random happenings (indeterminacy), he was very definite about the parameters he set within a piece. So when he composed the pieces for 20 radios going all at once, he determined the frequencies and the timing that each player would change frequencies by chance operations (the roll of dice, the I Ching, etc); but when he instructed the players as to what frequencies they should play and at what times they would change frequencies, he told them to be careful not to "mess up."


If it's the first piece on the program and a person is sitting at the piano in a penguin suit with his arms folded for 4'33", how would you even know he's a musician? He never proves it.

So the "piece" must require famous musicians, so that the audience knows it has that stamp of approval? Or it must be inserted into the program after we've seen the person at the piano establish himself as a musician?

Yes, it's concept art. To be compelling and not a waste of my time, even concept art needs to show some musicianly craft. I need to witness and hear a musician actually coax sound from an instrument using his body and his brain. That's what I'm paying for, to finance all that specialized training that musician had. Music is not purely intellect.

In the visual arts the equivalent would probably be a window which the visitor can look through and see whatever is randomly on the other side. The window could be reoriented multiple times during the day to change the view. In an art gallery I can at least quickly walk by concept art that is all concept and no art. In the concert hall I have to be a captive for 4'33".

Has anybody mentioned the emperor and his lack of clothes yet?



SanAntone said:


> People go to concerts for a number of reasons - some go to hear 4'33". Not you, of course. But there have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of concerts of 4'33". I guess you just don't get it. No big deal, I don't get the attraction of Wagner. Maybe Wagner is your favorite composer. "Que sera, sera."


What makes you think most people attend concerts to hear 4'33"? They do so _despite _its being on the program, not because of it. It's often sprung on the audience, catching them unaware, as the Berlin Philharmonic recently did.



SanAntone said:


> Which is why this endless debating 4'33" has become pointless on TC.


Yet you are doing your part to keep the debate going.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

WhateverDude said:


> Imagine thinking no one listened to the sound of the birds or the sound of the city or countryside before Cage introduced us to it.... what utter middle class arty pretention.


So were Beethoven, Respighi, and Messiaen being pretentious when they incorporated bird sounds into their music?


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I keep getting misquoted. On Open Book's last post, the first quote is mine but not the second and third ones.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I'll also mention something which is I think fascinating. I am not sure I could tell, without knowing, that Boulez's Structures 1a is constructed in a different way from Cage's Music of Changes. The Cage is more or less made with chance operations, the Boulez is totally composed, every note has been planned with a scheme -- at least as much as in music by Beethoven and Bach. *I think it's fascinating that two diametrically opposed approaches to composition could sound so similar*.


Perhaps the two works may sound similar at a first glance, but as a listener I need a musical piece to have structure, to have an inner logic or meaning that I can follow, otherwise I'll feel that I'm not going anywhere in my listening experience and this will be frustrating. This is crucial to me. Therefore, although I don't know this particular Boulez piece yet, I take it that it's a "better" work from a musical standpoint than the random noises of Cage.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Coach G said:


> So were Beethoven, Respighi, and Messiaen being pretentious when they incorporated bird sounds into their music?


No, they were representing the countryside. Beethoven was saying 'this is the music of the countryside, peasants listen to it all day long, why have the middle classes become so ****' ...then Cage came along and said 'this is my new important work'.... Beethoven would have wept at such a pompous gesture


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

4' 33'' has the same claim to music as a blank sheet of paper to literature. Interesting (briefly) idea but it isn't music. At least not in the conventional definition of the term.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

fluteman said:


> Excellent point, AbsolutelyBaching. But I have made exactly the same point here at TC, as have many others. I have also pointed out, as have many others, that Cage wrote other pieces, including some for conventional western musical instruments, played in conventional (or unconventional, but still audible) ways, that might further illuminate his ideas for the interested listener. Perhaps you too have made that point here before.
> 
> So I think we can safely conclude that no amount of repeating these points will convince anyone who is not already convinced, or interest anyone who is not already interested. Thus, you and I can leave these 4'33" debates and move on to other topics, secure in the knowledge that we have done our best.


I wouldn't mind if anyone engaged in that concept and decided, on such-and-such grounds, that no, they disagree that an artist's conception doesn't require us to believe it in order to get something from it... but there are a lot of posts flying around without even an acknowledgement that that point has been made, let alone coherently dissecting it and pulling the point apart.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Coach G said:


> I keep getting misquoted. On Open Book's last post, the first quote is mine but not the second and third ones.


My apologies. I fixed it.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> 4' 33'' has the same claim to music as a blank sheet of paper to literature. Interesting (briefly) idea but it isn't music. At least not in the conventional definition of the term.


Well, you are simply wrong. Edition Peters, a international classical music publisher, considers it music, publishes the score and rents it out to professional classical musicians, who also consider it music, to perform at their concerts.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Open Book said:


> Yes, it's concept art. To be compelling and not a waste of my time, even concept art needs to show some musicianly craft. I need to witness and hear a musician actually coax sound from an instrument using his body and his brain. That's what I'm paying for, to finance all that specialized training that musician had. Music is not purely intellect.


That is an assertion of your expectations.

They might be reasonable. Other reasonable people might think them unreasonable.

Cage's point, I think, would have been that by making you listen to your surroundings, the pianist (or whoever) _is_ being musicianly. He's making you listen to your surroundings. He's doing almost as much as he would be as if he were fingering consecutive thirteenths on a descending major/minor arpeggio with diminished 7ths in the pedal. (Or whatever!).

Now, you disagree with that concept, and that's fine. You are free to consider it a waste of money. But the performance he invites you to be a part of is * not* merely an outcome of 'purely intellect'. Pure intellect sounds of nothing at all, and wouldn't have interested Cage in the least.



Open Book said:


> In the visual arts the equivalent would probably be a window which the visitor can look through and see whatever is randomly on the other side. The window could be reoriented multiple times during the day to change the view. In an art gallery I can at least quickly walk by concept art that is all concept and no art. In the concert hall I have to be a captive for 4'33".


It's not a bad analogy: a visual artist forcing you to look at things in a new way. It works for me. And does 4'33" really count as 'captivity'. It's the length of a pop-song, is what he basically said it should be. If you can be captivated by that nothingness for the duration of a 'single' on the dance floor, is making you captive for that duration in the besuited and be-tuxxed environment of a concert hall really so terrible?



Open Book said:


> Has anybody mentioned the emperor and his lack of clothes yet?


Repeatedly. The trouble with the analogy is that is assumes the kid calling out 'the truth' is calling out the truth that no-one else dares speak. In this context, the kids are calling out a set of conventional assumptions which quite a lot of other people think are false or have missed the point. It's a false analogy, in short.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

fluteman said:


> Excellent point, AbsolutelyBaching. But I have made exactly the same point here at TC, as have many others. I have also pointed out, as have many others, that Cage wrote other pieces, including some for conventional western musical instruments, played in conventional (or unconventional, but still audible) ways, that might further illuminate his ideas for the interested listener. Perhaps you too have made that point here before.
> 
> *So I think we can safely conclude that no amount of repeating these points will convince anyone who is not already convinced, or interest anyone who is not already interested.* Thus, you and I can leave these 4'33" debates and move on to other topics, secure in the knowledge that we have done our best.


You are right, and I have made this point, probably more than once. I had moved on - but for some reason joined the fray again, today.  But I will once again leave the anti-Cage chorus to kick up a dust in their own little sandbox.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> 4' 33'' has the same claim to music as a blank sheet of paper to literature. Interesting (briefly) idea but it isn't music. At least not in the conventional definition of the term.


No, that's not correct.

An author or poet that has a blank sheet of paper has a problem they need to fix. Cage is asserting that he's going to make you listen to something that he's realised.

The comparison is inapt, because you are equating nothingness on a sheet of paper with a stackload of ambient sound Cage wants you to listen to. You are asserting that 0=1, when Cage is trying to get you to realise that 0 != 0.

And again: who gives a stuff if it's music or not? The point is not that its music, but that it makes you listen in a serious and purposeful way in a formal setting to the noises and sounds around you. That doesn't have to be musical to be interesting and serious and a sleight of artistic insight.


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## WhateverDude (Jun 21, 2019)

Coach G said:


> So were Beethoven, Respighi, and Messiaen being pretentious when they incorporated bird sounds into their music?


No, they incorporated a representation of it. Had Beethoven dragged the pompous middle classes out into the countryside and said 'listen to birdsong' they would have said 'stop being such a pompous fool, we do. We employ you to write music'.... the working class would have said 'who's Beethoven'... and continued listening to folk music and birdsong


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Well, you are simply wrong. Edition Peters, a international classical music publisher, considers it music, publishes the score and rents it out to professional classical musicians, who also consider it music, to perform at their concerts.


I doubt that every classical musician considers it music. I'm sure there's a diversity of opinion there as well as there is here. It could even be that a majority isn't impressed.

In fact, I'm sure in any decently sized ensemble there are _some _musicians who _sometimes _hate what they have to perform, or perpetrate, whatever it is. Orchestras are not democracies.

Also for musicians as well there is pressure to respect the composer or otherwise be seen by one's peers as not smart enough to get it, as is being implied about us here who feel negatively about 4'33".


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Open Book said:


> I doubt that every classical musician considers it music. I'm sure there's a diversity of opinion there as well as there is here. It could even be that a majority isn't impressed.
> 
> In fact, I'm sure in any decently sized ensemble there are _some _musicians who _sometimes _hate what they have to perform, or perpetrate, whatever it is. Orchestras are not democracies.
> 
> Also for musicians as well there is pressure to respect the composer or be seen by one's peers as not smart enough to get it, as is being implied about us here who feel negatively about 4'33".


You are posting speculation. I am posting facts: a major classical music publisher considers it music, is proud to have Cage among their roster of composers and _4'33"_ receives performances all over the world by professional classical musicians.

It doesn't matter that _you_ do not think it is music - there is a reality among those whose opinion actually matters who think it is music and who publish and perform it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> 4' 33'' has the same claim to music as a blank sheet of paper to literature. Interesting (briefly) idea but it isn't music. At least not in the conventional definition of the term.


Like Robert Rauschenberg's white painting maybe


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I wouldn't mind if anyone engaged in that concept and decided, on such-and-such grounds, that no, they disagree that an artist's conception doesn't require us to believe it in order to get something from it... but there are a lot of posts flying around without even an acknowledgement that that point has been made, let alone coherently dissecting it and pulling the point apart.


Yes, I understand your frustration. But you can take my word when I say if you are waiting for a general acknowledgement that this point, or many points like it, have been made, you are waiting in vain.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> No-one in the last few pages has claimed, let alone insisted, that it is a musical work.
> 
> I don't know how often I need to repeat: whether it's music *or not* makes no difference. If it makes us listen to noise, music and silence _differently_, it's done its job as a work of art and deserves to be regarded seriously in consequence.


It's not a work of art, unless of course, one has set the lowest bar for what works of art are, and doesn't deserve to be regarded as such 'seriously in consequence'. Perhaps it's an interesting concept or way of thinking.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> You are posting speculation. I am posting facts: a major classical music publisher considers it music, is proud to have Cage among their roster of composers and _4'33"_ receives performances all over the world by professional classical musicians.
> 
> It doesn't matter that _you_ do not think it is music - there is a reality among those whose opinion actually matters who think it is music and who publish and perform it.


When it comes to 4'33", no matter how many ways you want to frame it, Cage didn't compose anything. Considering the way Cage described the meaning behind 4'33", there's nothing a publisher can put in a 'score' that than can represent any music Cage composed. I'll stifle myself regarding what I think about the fact that people might actually purchase the $9.95 'score' of 4'33". When musicians 'perform' 4'33", they aren't doing anything.

According to Cage's concept, it's the audience that should be listening to something that has nothing to do with the musicians. That may be the sound of the AC, the crackling of a candy wrapper, the person coughing 2 rows behind or the sound of someone snoring somewhere in the hall.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

DaveM said:


> When it comes to 4'33", no matter how many ways you want to frame it, Cage didn't compose anything. Considering the way Cage described the meaning behind 4'33", there's nothing a publisher can put in a 'score' that than can represent any music Cage composed. I'll stifle myself regarding what I think about the fact that people might actually purchase the $9.95 'score' of 4'33". When musicians 'perform' 4'33", they aren't doing anything.
> 
> According to Cage's concept, it's the audience that should be listening to something that has nothing to do with the musicians. That may be the sound of the AC, the crackling of a candy wrapper, the person coughing 2 rows behind or the sound of someone snoring somewhere in the hall.


A work first begins as a conception in the mind of the composer who then creates a score to be used for performance. 4'33" satisfies these requirements, no differently than a Beethoven piano sonata.

No matter what you can or cannot think about 4'33", it is a composition listed in the John Cage catalog of Edition Peters, and is programmed and performed in concert venues around the world. It does not require your consent or agreement and does not need your permission, obviously, since it has been performed continually since it was premiered in 1952.

Your opinion of the work is entirely irrelevant.

Of course you are free to think what you want about the work - but nothing you can articulate about it changes one iota of the reality of its acceptance by the professional classical community.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> A work first begins as a conception in the mind of the composer who then creates a score to be used for performance. 4'33" satisfies these requirements, no differently than a Beethoven piano sonata.


So you say. I'm not the only one who would see that comparison as bizarre. Cage didn't write a single note of music for 4'33"



> No matter what you can or cannot think about 4'33", it is a composition listed in the John Cage catalog of Edition Peters, and is programmed and performed in concert venues around the world. It does not require your consent or agreement and does not need your permission, obviously, since it has been performed continually since it was premiered in 1952.


I know what the definition of a performance is and it isn't sitting still doing nothing. Some people have the propensity to rename and believe all sorts of things.



> Your opinion of the work is entirely irrelevant.


As an opinion in answer to the OP, it's just as relevant as yours regardless of how superior you are inferring yours is.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Your opinion of the work is entirely irrelevant.


You've said words to that effect quite a few times, and it's odd coming from someone who apparently believes that the only value these works have is based in subjective opinions. So every opinion would be relevant, right? Or yours is just as irrelevant. Or is it a sort of appeal to authority: the Grove says such and such, that settles it, so shut up.


> Of course you are free to think what you want about the work - but nothing you can articulate about it changes one iota of the reality of its acceptance by the professional classical community.


But I don't really think it _is_ accepted by the professional classical community in the way that, say, the Brahms Fourth is, is it? Nothing you can articulate about it changes _that_, either.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> A work first begins as a conception in the mind of the composer who then creates a score to be used for performance. 4'33" satisfies these requirements, no differently than a Beethoven piano sonata.


That is why Cage is a laughing stock but Beethoven isn't.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

On the point of whether or not 4:33 is music. It does matter - because this is a thread in a forum called "Classical Music Discussion". If it is not music then it should not be being discussed here as the main subject of a thread.

I therefore understand why those who believe that it is not music are frustrated, as if you hold that view then you see the forum being misused to discuss something which does not belong.

If you do believe that it is music, then you still have to establish that it is classical music, or it should not be being discussed here. I guess if you envisage a rock version of 4:33 where Led Zeppelin strut around the stage making no noise for 4:33 then that would not be classical music, but if someone sits at a piano in white tie then it is.

This takes us to the Sorites paradox. (If someone with loads of hair on their head is "not bald", and one falls out they are still not bald; same for another; same for another; etc. However, when they are down to 1 hair they are "bald"' same for 2 hairs, etc. Come up with your own example.

This is something which bright teenagers and some philosophers appears to find interesting, but which the rest of us think is pretty tedious. Terms can be vague. There will be people that some people would regard as bald, and some not (because they are thinning a bit). And this clearly matters a lot to some. :lol:

Many discussions on Talk Classical come down to people disagreeing about absolutes, when the terms that are employing are susceptible to vagueness problems of the Sorites type. An example is "Is something music?"

There must be some characteristics of something which classify it as music - rules of set membership. However, it is a word in common usage and can readily be vague. There will be some things which all (or almost all ) agree is music - take one of Bach's fugues. Then there will be other things which all (or almost all ) agree are not music - take the Mona Lisa.

My feeling is that 4:33 is well into the "not music" end of things. I guess that implies that its characteristics are ones which I see as not that important in the fuzzy world of deciding if it satisfies the conditions for being a member of the set of things that are music. That would include things like what the person is wearing when they perform it; whether it is published in a particular edition; etc.

I would more prioritise matters such as that there is a consciously planned structure in the sounds, probably because I think that music is centrally concerned with communication - people communing with each other in a particular way. Clearly this takes you to the question of randomness in music. This is another Sorites thing: I would have entirely random sounds (even if performed on an instrument) as "not music", and I would have the Bach fugue as "music". If you asked how much randomness is too much for something to be music, I would respond "fuzzy".

So we will continue to disagree. Some will think that 4:33 has characteristics that qualify it as music, and some will not.
We will also continue to get cross, because those who think it is not music will feel that it should not be being discussed in a forum called Classical Music Discussion. I wonder if it gets particularly heated because there is a sense of community about things like Talk Classical, and this sort of debate makes people feel that they don't belong in the same community.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> That is why Cage is a laughing stock but Beethoven isn't.


Cage wrote _some_ good music, like the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. I'm not defending 4'33"


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

ORigel said:


> Cage wrote _some_ good music, like the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano.


I just had a quick listen - sounded very peculiar...anything in particular?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

ORigel said:


> Cage wrote _some_ good music, like the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. I'm not defending 4'33"


Yes, I can agree. Unfortunately, _4'33"_ over shadows the listenable music that he wrote.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Eclectic Al said:


> On the point of whether or not 4:33 is music. It does matter - because this is a thread in a forum called "Classical Music Discussion". If it is not music then it should not be being discussed here as the main subject of a thread. I therefore understand why those who believe that it is not music are frustrated, as if you hold that view then you see the forum being misused to discuss something which does not belong.


That's a pretty weak argument. "If it's not music, then it's abuse of the forum" immediately implies the rejoinder "And if it is music, then it's _not_ abuse of the forum". So then the question about whether or not it's music is clearly something that _should_ be discussed here. And that's in any case an entirely separate matter to _whether it is necessary to determine an outcome to that question_.

If this forum is considered a suitable place to discuss the best make of headphones (which are clearly not music), *which it is*, without major incident or upset; then this forum must also be a suitable place to discuss whether 4'33" is music. And just as no headphones thread is ever going to determine "These! These! You _have_ to have _these_ headphones, all others are invalid", so it's not necessary for this thread to determine "This is definitely music" or "This is definitely not music" -and yet it remains a legitimate subject for discussion.



Eclectic Al said:


> There must be some characteristics of something which classify it as music


And almost immediately, you're into the 'how do we define what music is!" territory. That there are people saying, 'one doesn't need to do that before deciding if it can be appreciated' is simply ignored: no, the definitional question _must_ be addressed! And so you're immediately talking straight past people. And yeah, that gets up some people's noses!



Eclectic Al said:


> So we will continue to disagree. Some will think that 4:33 has characteristics that qualify it as music, and some will not.


We will continue to disagree if that's the only subject up for debate, clearly. But it's unnecessarily reductive.

Imagine all those old 19th Century music old-timers who said, 'Beethoven's latest work cannot be a symphony, because it's got a chorus!'. Was it ever necessary to get hung up on a definitional question of 'what makes it a symphony?' before saying, 'it's a masterpiece!'?

Note, I'm definitely _not_ saying 4'33" is a masterpiece, but I don't think it necessary to get hung up on binary definitional questions before trying to understand it or appreciate it, for what it *is*, rather than what some people claim it to be.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Eclectic Al said:


> On the point of whether or not 4:33 is music. It does matter - because this is a thread in a forum called "Classical Music Discussion". If it is not music then it should not be being discussed here as the main subject of a thread.
> 
> So we will continue to disagree. Some will think that 4:33 has characteristics that qualify it as music, and some will not.
> We will also continue to get cross, because those who think it is not music will feel that it should not be being discussed in a forum called Classical Music Discussion. I wonder if it gets particularly heated because there is a sense of community about things like Talk Classical, and this sort of debate makes people feel that they don't belong in the same community.


Are you saying that TC exists outside of the real world? That is, if enough members on TC decide something is "not music" then it is verboten for discussion here despite the fact that in the real world of classical music _4'33"_ has been accepted as music for nearly 70 years?

Not only has 4'33" been accepted as music but it has spawned an entire school of composers working exclusively with noise and silence. And their work is not that recent either, dating back 40-50 years, and continuing up to the present.

It is sad that a few backward thinking members can disrupt the discussions on TC. The world has passed you by. I guess your last refuge is to try to create a little Internet planet where you can define works like _4'33"_ out of existence.

However, I prefer Planet Earth.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

"The premises for composing with silence, pseudo-silence, or extreme quiet are similar to those for composing with noise; *Valeska Gert*'s most notorious performance, _Pause_ (1920), consisted only of her standing on stage, still and silent, a gesture at least as disruptive as any of her noisier vocal works. Again, Cage is an important source of inspiration.

_4′33″_ was a piece of noise music as much as it was anything else, and many of the artists already mentioned may be equally associated with both noise and silence. And as those artists working with noise had done, musicians in the 1990s and after went far beyond Cage in exploring silence or near silence.

For all their diversity, one characteristic that unites these musicians is a denial of the idea of silence as a fixed condition. Cage made a musical virtue of the fact that true silence is not possible, but his artistic descendants have explored with great invention the variety of possible silences.

The most formal explorations of these many potential states of silence have been carried out by the composers of the *Wandelweiser* group. *Jürg Frey* has articulated a simple taxonomy of different types of silence: "Silence between sounds, before you hear a sound and after you've heard a sound. Silence which never comes into contact with the sounds, but which is omnipresent and exists only because sound exists."

The distinctions are more than rhetorical, and the result is a large and diverse body of music at which _4′33″_ could only hint. *Beuger*'s _etwas_ (lied) (1995), for mezzo-soprano and piano, fractures the word "etwas" into its component letters. In the second section, "t," the two performers simply repeat the letter "t" every five seconds, in unison. The twist is that they shouldn't look at each other, so there is no possibility of visual cueing. The silence between each pair of plosive attacks is unpredictable and tense, both for the performers and the audience.

*Pisaro*'s _Fade_ (2000), for solo piano, asks for single notes to be played in even pulses, each pulse quieter than the one before. As the notes disappear from audibility, the ear is drawn in closer and closer. What appears at first a way of marking the precise boundary between sound and silence instead only serves to dissolve that border entirely, until the two states become indistinguishable.

Beginning with 2005/1, the score of which reads simply "place / time / ( sounds )," *Manfred Werder*'s "year/ number" pieces - whose titles are also their dates of composition - offer a series of subtle and progressive colorations of the _4′33″_ premise. Subsequent scores in this series first elaborate on the situational premise of _2005/1_ (_2006/1_ reads, "a place, natural light, where the performer, performers, like to be / a time / [ sounds ]"); then introduce specific sounding objects, such as "spider / air / eucalyptus / wasp / petals / rain" (_2008/6_); and finally shift fully into the realm of text, providing just evocative quotations that are presumably intended to instigate some sort of musical act (2012/3 supplies a line from *Alain Badiou*'s _Logique des Mondes_, for example).

Whether the works in this final group are to be rendered as publically audited sound at all is open to question; Werder provides no other guidance in his scores, and realizations of them that take place entirely in the mind of a single reader are conceivable."

- Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> 4′33″ was a piece of noise music as much as it was anything else, and many of the artists already mentioned may be equally associated with both noise and silence. And as those artists working with noise had done, musicians in the 1990s and after went far beyond Cage in exploring silence or near silence...


So is either noise or silence actually music?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> So is either noise or silence actually music?


So, does it matter either way?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So, does it matter either way?


Does it matter if a banana is a book? Well yeah, if we want to be precise and not insane.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

SanAntone said:


> "The premises for composing with silence, pseudo-silence, or extreme quiet are similar to those for composing with noise; *Valeska Gert*'s most notorious performance, _Pause_ (1920), consisted only of her standing on stage, still and silent, a gesture at least as disruptive as any of her noisier vocal works. Again, Cage is an important source of inspiration. is no possibility of visual cueing. The silence between each pair of plosive attacks is unpredictable and tense, both for the performers and the audience.


Cage's 4'33'' is from 1952.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

consuono said:


> So is either noise or silence actually music?





AbsolutelyBaching said:


> So, does it matter either way?


Right. What is being resisted by some TC members is the fact that dozens of composers, musicians, performers are devoting their careers to the pursuit of creating music using noise and/or silence, or a blending of both. These are real, hard, facts: this music exists, it is ongoing, there is a community of artists creating it, and there is an audience for it.

The members on TC who wish to enforce an obsolete idea of what is music are delusional in their denial of what has been happening in classical music for decades.

However, nothing is stopping these members from listening to the music of their choice and completely ignoring what others are doing with noise or silence. What is odd is this idea that these members have of wishing to control what is discussed on TC or what should be included in the broad category of classical music.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> Does it matter if a banana is a book? Well yeah, if we want to be precise and not insane.


See, you always answer the question assuming no other answers.

If one is neither hungry nor in need of a bed-time read, then no: it doesn't actually matter if a banana is a book or not.

If it's in a glass case in an art gallery, it's probably something made to _look_ like a banana but made of plaster or something.

People are always so keen to categorise. It's why we're forever having 'top 10 best composers' threads or what have you. People seem to love league tables, classifying and defining. Which is fine, in it's way too. But sometimes, it's just not necessary in order to appreciate a thing for whatever you imagine it to be.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

I looked up the Wiki article on Valeska Gert, of whom I had never heard before, and she does sound fascinating:


> In the 1920s, Gert premiered one of her more provocative works, titled "Pause". Performed in between reels at Berlin cinemas, it was intended to draw attention to inactivity, silence, serenity, and stillness amid all the movement and chaos in modern life. She came onstage and literally just stood there. "It was so radical just to go on stage in the cinema and stand there and do nothing," said Wolfgang Mueller.


Now as a "conceptual artist" her career seems to be very interesting. But is she in the same category as Nijinsky or Pavlova? That's the question.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> If one is neither hungry nor in need of a bed-time read, then no: it doesn't actually matter if a banana is a book or not.


The essence of a banana or a book doesn't depend on my needs or what I wish one or the other to be. A banana is a banana, a book is a book.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

What I'd like to check out is a book with a fresh banana in it.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

A book with lots of pages (433) but no words.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> The essence of a banana or a book doesn't depend on my needs or what I wish one or the other to be. A banana is a banana, a book is a book.


Come now. You didn't ask 'does the essence of a banana or book change under different circumstances', did you?

You asked: "Does it matter if a banana is a book?"

Does it *matter*.

Does it *matter* if it's a book or a banana if you have no need to eat or read? No. Since you have no need to eat, whether the "thing" is edible or not is immaterial. Since you do not wish to read, the fact the "thing" needs peeling is of no consequence at this time.

You're moving the goalposts, basically. You started by asking whether it *mattered* whether we classified something. Now you're saying that the essence of something remains invariant however we classify it. Which is true, but is not what you asked.

By analogy, Cage's 4'33" is whatever it is. But does it *matter* whether we classify it as music or not-music? No. It still remains whatever it is, because its nature "doesn't depend on what you wish it to be".


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Has anyone mentioned this yet?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Bulldog said:


> What I'd like to check out is a book with a fresh banana in it.


Settle for a record album?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

The definition of classical music has always been in flux. Bach might be surprised by some of Beethoven's late music; both he and Beethoven might question the music of Debussy, and certainly be aghast at Schoenberg.

You will disqualify some pretty major areas of classical music if you freeze the standard at some point in the past.

But that is exactly what those anti-Cage members wish to do. They don't like, don't recognize, and certainly do not understand, much of the music post-Cage, the so-called "avant-garde."

But that is _their_ limitation.

Just like a dictionary is a compendium of usage - the definitions change with new usages, and new words are added every year. *It is what is done that matters*, not drawing a line at some point and then standing, arms akimbo, declaring - all that stuff, past this point, is NOT MUSIC.

It is kind of silly.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> The definition of classical music has always been in flux. Bach might be surprised by some of Beethoven's late music; both he and Beethoven might question the music of Debussy, and certainly be aghast at Schoenberg.
> 
> You will disqualify some pretty major areas of classical music if you freeze the standard at some point in the past.
> 
> ...


Well, you go too far for me in the opposite direction. First, you're claiming 4'33" _is_ classical music, which is (I think) merely asserting that which has not yet been universally decided.

And then you start talking about anti-Cage cabals and groups who have "limitations" and what have you, which I can quite understand would be offensive to some.

Me, I'm a quantum musician. Something can be both music and not-music at the same time. Until the cupboard door of eternity is opened to reveal the cleaning lady of destiny either alive or dead, I shall assume she is in a superposition of both states. And I needn't enquire further!

So, for me: I'm just going to appreciate 4'33" as whatever it is, and not fret about putting a label on it. Nor putting a label on anyone who regards it differently from me. I think if everyone could do likewise, there'd be a lot more light than heat, to be honest.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*John Cage* - _Nocturne for Violin and Piano_


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Come now. You didn't ask 'does the essence of a banana or book change under different circumstances', did you?
> 
> You asked: "Does it matter if a banana is a book?"
> 
> ...


It matters insofar as reality matters. I can call a fish a cow all I want and throw in a lot of semantic philosophical orthological whatevers into it, but still each is what each is.


> You're moving the goalposts, basically. You started by asking whether it *mattered* whether we classified something.


No, *you* asked that. My question was if noise or silence is actually music.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

janxharris said:


> A book with lots of pages (433) but no words.


That reminds me of a scene in Cocteau's Orpheus. He is handed a book of poetry:

Orpheus: Every page is blank!

His Friend: It's called "Nudism."

Orpheus: It's absurd.

His Friend: Less absurd than if it were full of absurd writing.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Well, you go too far for me in the opposite direction. First, you're claiming 4'33" _is_ classical music, which is (I think) merely asserting that which has not yet been universally decided.
> 
> And then you start talking about anti-Cage cabals and groups who have "limitations" and what have you, which I can quite understand would be offensive to some.
> 
> ...


I am saying that 4'33" has been accepted by the professional classical community as music and has been published by a classical music firm, and performed by classical musicians for nearly 70 years. You say I am, "merely asserting that which has not yet been universally decided."

Your statement does not jibe with the reality, which does not change because some members of TC are unable to accept the fact that 4'33" has been programmed and performed as classical music for decades and by classical performers all across the world.

I have been consistently saying that TC is not the standard, nor some frozen definition of music - *the standard is what is done by classical professionals*, what they decide is classical music worthy of a performance.

You can either like it or not, listen to it or not. But only a delusional person would deny the reality.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

consuono said:


> My question was if noise or silence is actually music.


"Organized sound" is electronic music.

Silence is like the "color white" -- is it a color, or a lack of color?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> The definition of classical music has always been in flux.


Has it really? Were there debates over whether Stephen Foster is "classical music"?


> Bach might be surprised by some of Beethoven's late music; both he and Beethoven might question the music of Debussy, and certainly be aghast at Schoenberg.


I don't think any of that is actually true. Late Beethoven would probably have been completely recognizable as music to Bach since so much of it was built on Bachian foundations, for one thing. All the earlier ones might have been "aghast" or dismissive of Schoenberg, but I think they would've been able to follow Schoenberg's logic.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> It matters insofar as reality matters. I can call a fish a cow all I want and throw in a lot of semantic philosophical orthological whatevers into it, but still each is what each is.
> No, *you* asked that. My question was if noise or silence is actually music.


I can't be arguing about what your post actually said. Yes, you asked that question in post #222, to which I said, 'does it matter either way' and to which you replied in post #224



consuono said:


> Does it matter if a banana is a book? Well yeah, if we want to be precise and not insane.


So yes, your question was _precisely_ does it matter if a banana is a book.

My answer still stands.

And you can throw in "if we want to be precise" if you like, but that merely prompts the question: _why_ do you want to be precise?
Do you feel the need for such precision to questions such as Is Beethoven 9th a symphony? Is Britten's Spring Symphony a Symphony? Is his Cello Symphony a Symphony? Or a Concerto?

What does it *matter* to be precise in such things? Your life doesn't depend on the answer.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

consuono said:


> Has it really? Were there debates over whether Stephen Foster is "classical music"?
> I don't think any of that is actually true. Late Beethoven would probably have been completely recognizable as music to Bach since so much of it was built on Bachian foundations, for one thing. All the earlier ones might have been "aghast" or dismissive of Schoenberg, but I think they would've been able to follow Schoenberg's logic.


You would say that, because you are so invested in denying what you choose is not music or not classical music.

But your opinion flies in the face of reality.

The matter has been decided, John Cage is a respected classical music composer. His work 4'33" has been accepted as a classical music work and performed no differently than a sonata by Beethoven or a prelude/fugue by Bach. In fact, it has been performed on the same program with those works.

Your navel gazing will not convince any person who is moderately aware of the status of classical music since the middle of the 20th century.

Console yourself with the music you enjoy and live in your own little world where you are king deciding what is music or not.

It does not matter.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> I can't be arguing about what your post actually said. Yes, you asked that question in post #222, to which I said, 'does it matter either way' and to which you replied in post #224
> 
> So yes, your question was _precisely_ does it matter if a banana is a book.
> 
> My answer still stands.


In response to your question as to whether it matters. That wasn't the original question. Reality is only reality insofar as it "matters"? Whether it matters to me or not, the half-life of uranium is what it is.


> Do you feel the need for such precision to questions such as Is Beethoven 9th a symphony? Is Britten's Spring Symphony a Symphony? Is his Cello Symphony a Symphony? Or a Concerto?
> 
> What does it *matter* to be precise in such things? Your life doesn't depend on the answer.


So precision is only required if one's life depends on it? Does it _matter_ if I call all the above selections movies instead of music? No, but it would still be wrong.


SanAntone said:


> The matter has been decided, John Cage is a respected classical music composer.


 Really now. Who decided that, and on what objective basis? Anyway the discussion isn't about Cage's entire body of work.


NoCoPilot said:


> "Organized sound" is electronic music.


"Organized sound" is any music. "Organized" is the key word.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> "Organized sound" is any music. "Organized" is the key word.


You are, of course, begging the question.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> You are, of course, begging the question.


I am absolutely not. That is a pretty concise definition of music, "good" or "bad".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> Really now. Who decided that, and on what objective basis? Anyway the discussion isn't about Cage's entire body of work.


You can see 4.33 is respected by its influence - on all the Wandelweiser composers for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> I am absolutely not. That is a pretty concise definition of music, "good" or "bad".


Oh yes you are.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> You can see 4.33 is respected by its influence - on all the Wandelweiser composers for example.


I couldn't care less if it's "respected". You have, of course, introduced a red herring.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> I couldn't care less if it's "respected". You have, of course, introduced a red herring.


Oh no I haven't.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Oh no I haven't.


OK, then demonstrate how that proves anything being discussed thus far. The Wandelweiser composers are authorities...why? Because you say so? The ones who care about "respectability" and validation are Cage fans.


SanAntone said:


> Your navel gazing will not convince any person who is moderately aware of the status of classical music since the middle of the 20th century.
> 
> Console yourself with the music you enjoy and live in your own little world where you are king deciding what is music or not.
> 
> It does not matter.


Progress will march on without you! That's cute and so 19th century. Anyway, isn't all music opinion about "navel gazing"? I mean, you gaze at your navel and pontificate that John Williams isn't a "classical" composer.

It doesn't matter.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> In response to your question as to whether it matters. That wasn't the original question. Reality is only reality insofar as it "matters"? Whether it matters to me or not, the half-life of uranium is what it is.
> 
> So precision is only required if one's life depends on it? Does it _matter_ if I call all the above selections movies instead of music? No, but it would still be wrong.
> Really now. Who decided that, and on what objective basis? Anyway the discussion isn't about Cage's entire body of work.
> "Organized sound" is any music. "Organized" is the key word.


OK, well: we're done. You don't get to pick and choose what 'the original question' was. You asked a question; I responded... and in response to that: *you asked another question*. To which I also responded, but which you now duck.

You also don't get to throw in posts from two other people whose contributions in one case I don't agree with, and in the second, I haven't been paying attention to.

Well, you do of course. You do whatever you like. But I choose not to respond from that point.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians - the standard reference text for classical music.

*Cage, John (Milton, Jr.)*

James Pritchett, Laura Kuhn and Charles Hiroshi Garrett

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2223954
Published in print: 26 November 2013Published online: 10 July 2012

(b Los Angeles, Sept 5, 1912; d New York, Aug 12, 1992). American composer. One of the leading figures of the postwar avant garde. The influence of his compositions, writings and personality has been felt by a wide range of composers around the world. He had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer.

[Long discussion of his *1. Beginnings*. *2. Dance, percussion, prepared piano. * *3. New aesthetics, silence.* *4. Chance.*]

*5. Fame.*

Cage's work had been known in contemporary music circles for some good while (in part through teaching in the late 1950s at the New School for Social Research, where he instructed a number of composers who were involved in Fluxus), but in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he rose to a much higher prominence through performances abroad (both on his own and with the Cunningham Dance Company; fig.2), recordings (including the famous recording of his 1958 lecture "Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music"). In 1961 his music began to be published by C.F. Peters, and consequently to be performed worldwide. Most importantly, the same year saw the publication of Silence: Lectures and Writings. This collection, probably more than any other single production, turned him into a composer of international renown. Yet it was often the case that many of Cage's critics knew the book, but had never heard a composition, and few had heard enough of the music to appreciate the range of musical expressions included. This has led to many misunderstandings, myths and hostilities, and it is probably the reason for the dubious judgment that Cage was more a philosopher than a composer.

*6. Later work.*

In the foreword to his second collection of writings, A Year from Monday (1967), Cage indicated that "I am less and less interested in music." His writings, lectures and even his music began to be filled with references to other subjects. Indeed, it seemed as if he was more interested in the 1960s in Marshall McLuhan, Maoism, Buckminster Fuller and other political and cultural figures than he was in music. However, with the composition of Cheap Imitation for piano (1969), a tribute to Erik Satie, Cage reaffirmed his commitment to music, and the final 25 years of his life were spent as a very active composer, writing pieces for the most diverse of media.

Some of the directions Cage's output took over these later years were largely the results of commissions from performers. Several sets of études, for example, came in response to requests from virtuoso players, the most extravagant of these the Freeman Etudes, written for Paul Zukofsky. A large-scale multimedia piece for orchestra, Renga, to be performed together with another "musicircus" called Apartment House 1776was a commission in honor of the bicentennial of the American Revolution. Of five operas, each called Europera, the first two were written at the request of the Frankfurt opera company; they comprise excerpts of the Western operatic tradition combined with chance-derived sets, lighting, costumes and stage directions.

If Cage's compositional structures remained in the 1970s as chance-based and non-personal as ever, this did not prevent him from engaging with different personal themes and subjects in his work. His move from New York City to the countryside in the mid-1950s had sparked an interest in nature (most famously, his passion for hunting mushrooms, the collection of which is housed by the University of California, Santa Cruz), and subsequently a love of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Nature imagery and Thoreau's writings and drawings begin appearing in Cage's musical works in 1970 with the Song Books and continued off and on for the rest of his life. James Joyce was another important source, most notably represented in Roaratorio: an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979). This work for electronic tape and performers is Cage's attempt to translate Joyce's mammoth final novel into music by combining a collage of sounds mentioned in the book with his own reading of a Joyce-derived text and live performances by Irish folk musicians. In 1983, the Ryoanji rock garden, a site that had long resonated strongly for Cage, inspired the first of a series of compositions, in which he traced the contours of stones to discover the pitch contours of the solo parts. In many similar situations, when asked to compose a new work, Cage would as often as not turn to one of these favourite subjects and invent a new, untried way of applying them to his own music.

Over the course of his career, Cage also worked increasingly in non-musical media, especially graphics and, employing his natural gift for writing, poetry. A Year from Monday contains fewer essays of a critical nature than Silence and more poetry and social commentary, including the first installments of his Diary: How to Improve the World (You'll Only Make Matters Worse). In 1978 a residency at Crown Point Press to create prints so took him that he went annually until his death, later also working in watercolours. Cage also made one film, One11, and, at the end of his life, was involved in curating exhibitions, notably the posthumous Rolywholyover: a Circus. In all of these areas he brought his use of chance operations and the I Ching to bear on the materials at hand. The result was an ongoing series of wondrous adventures into new areas of expression, both for Cage personally and for his audience.

In 1987 Cage wrote a piece for flute and piano entitled Two, the first of a series of 43 compositions over his last five years of output that together form the major final phase of work. Their common ground is twofold: first, they all consist of mostly short fragments of music (often single notes) which have a flexible placement in time through a system of "brackets" - a range of times (given in minutes and seconds) indicate the period during which the musical fragment may begin and another range the period during which the music must be completed. Secondly, each piece is named by the number of performers involved; superscripts distinguish compositions for the same number of players (e.g. Two, Two2, Two3, etc.). These two features have led to these works being referred to as the "time bracket" or "number" pieces. Austere and spiritually powerful, they represent a return to pure music for Cage, without thematic associations. At the same time, the compositional techniques employed are not the focus of the work, as was the case in the 1950s, the last period in which Cage was concerned with exclusively musical issues. Indeed, by the later numbers in the series, the composition process was simply a matter of randomly selecting a range of pitches and a handful of pitches within that range, and of chance determination, within broad limits, where the bracket timings would fall. The technique of these pieces is no more than the brush with which Cage applied his sonic paint. And yet they exhibit a tremendous spectrum of sonorities, effects and moods. If proof were needed they demonstrate once and for all the depth of Cage's musical imagination and vision.

____________________________________

This reference material documents the acceptance of John Cage as a classical composer whose important has been significant. This does not come from a blog, nor an article in a magazine, nor a review of a concert or recording, nor an Amazon reviewer, but the standard reference text for classical music and musicians.

It does not matter your opinion of his music, you are free to dislike it. There are certainly classical composers whose music I don't like.

But this TC phenomenon of debating whether _4'33"_ is music or if John Cage is a classical composer or if the classical avant-garde is a part of classical music, is a odd hothouse preoccupation among a tiny group of Internet forum habitués and amounts to mental self-gratification.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> OK, then demonstrate how that proves anything being discussed thus far. The Wandelweiser composers are authorities...why? Because you say so? The ones who care about "respectability" and validation are Cage fans.
> Progress will march on without you! That's cute and so 19th century. Anyway, isn't all music opinion about "navel gazing"? I mean, you gaze at your navel and pontificate that John Williams isn't a "classical" composer.
> 
> It doesn't matter.


If you don't like Wandelweisser, how about Another Timbre? Alvin Lucier? Francisco Lopez? Peter Ablinger? Christian Wolff? I could go on . . .


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> OK, well: we're done. You don't get to pick and choose what 'the original question' was. You asked a question; I responded... and in response to that: you asked another question. To which I also responded, but which you now duck.


I didn't pick or choose anything. My original question is still right up there, comment # whatever. From which you deflected with "does it matter?". Well, maybe not in the cosmic scheme of things, but my calling Beethoven's 9th symphony a Pertrachan sonnet doesn't make it a Petrarchan sonnet. Capisce?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Hear performances from all over the world:
https://www.johncage.org/4_33.html


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Philip Glass on John Cage:

Because of the artists like Cage and Beckett who came before us, we didn't have to take everything apart, since it had already been taken apart. We didn't have to destroy the idea of the novel -- Beckett's _Molloy_ and _Malone Dies_ had already done that. In many ways, Cage and Beckett cleared the playing field and gave us permission to start playing again. We were the beneficiaries.
John Cage liked me personally, but sometimes we would have conversations in which he would shake his head and say, "Philip, too many notes, too many notes, too many notes."
I would laugh, and reply, "John, I'm one of your children, whether you like it or not."


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

SanAntone said:


> Well, you are simply wrong. Edition Peters, a international classical music publisher, considers it music, publishes the score and rents it out to professional classical musicians, who also consider it music, to perform at their concerts.


I'm not convinced. Just because a fringe part of the musical community may consider it music, it doesn't make it so. And who knows if they even consider it music. Maybe they buy it for its novelty, although I find it hard to see the value in a blank sheet of paper with a time on it. Can't the musicians just use their watches to not play for 4'33''?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> No, that's not correct.
> 
> An author or poet that has a blank sheet of paper has a problem they need to fix. Cage is asserting that he's going to make you listen to something that he's realised.
> 
> ...


I think you just proved my point. 4'33'' is an interesting idea but it is not music.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I'm not convinced. Just because a fringe part of the musical community may consider it music, it doesn't make it so. And who knows if they even consider it music. Maybe they buy it for its novelty, although I find it hard to see the value in a blank sheet of paper with a time on it. Can't the musicians just use their watches to not play for 4'33''?


But it is not a "fringe group." You may not have seen my post, but I quoted the entry for John Cage from the standard reference text for classical music and musicians, the Grove Encyclopedia. He is considered a composer, and an important one at that, by the mainstream of classical music. While _4'33"_ is controversial, it has been embraced and performed by a large number of classical musicians over decades.

Your opinion that _4'33" _is not music is a personal view, nothing more, and you are of course welcome to hold it. But at the same time, you should be aware that there are those among the professional classical music community who do consider it music, and worthy of performance at their concerts.

Khatia Buniatshvili just included it on her latest recording Labyrinth (I am not a fan of recordings of 4'33" since it is more suitable for a live concert). She's not a member of a fringe group.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

These are facts:
Any description of Cage's 4'33" makes it clear that the 'performers' with instruments are not performing or doing anything. It is the audience that is instructed to listen to the sounds in the environment they are in and these sounds are what constitutes the 'music'.

My opinion:
The message or concept behind 4'33" is closer to an exercise in Mindfulness than listening to an actual classical music performance. There is evidence supporting this:

From the 4'33" Wiki:
*...the score instructs performers not to play their instruments* during the entire duration of the piece... *The piece consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear*...although it is commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence". *4′33″ became for Cage the epitome of his idea that any sounds may constitute music. It was also a reflection of the influence of Zen Buddhism, which Cage had studied since the late 1940s.*

From the Mindfulness Wiki:
*Mindfulness practice involves the process of developing the skill of bringing one's attention to whatever is happening in the present moment. Mindfulness derives from a significant element of Buddhist traditions and based on Zen.*


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> But it is not a "fringe group." You may not have seen my post, but I quoted the entry for John Cage from the standard reference text for classical music and musicians, the Grove Encyclopedia. He is considered a composer, and an important one at that, by the mainstream of classical music. While _4'33"_ is controversial, it has been embraced and performed by a large number of classical musicians over decades.
> 
> Your opinion that _4'33" _is not music is a personal view, nothing more, and you are of course welcome to hold it. But at the same time, you should be aware that there are those among the professional classical music community who do consider it music, and worthy of performance at their concerts.
> 
> Khatia Buniatshvili just included it on her latest recording Labyrinth. She's not a member of a fringe group.


Yes there have been a number of musicians who've performed Cage. There have been a number of performers who've done "classicalized" mashups of Beatles songs too. Why the sudden reverence for consensus when it suits your purpose? Cage's "importance" is just as subjective a matter as Bach's "greatness". His fan base is probably about as large as that of Kraftwerk. Not that it matters, of course, but you seem to be the one eager for validation and strength in numbers.
And why the disparagement of subjective opinions which differ from your own? Is the judgement of Cage fans somehow superior?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I think you just proved my point. 4'33'' is an interesting idea but it is not music.


If only you'd stopped at "it's an interesting idea". 

That's all it needs to be.

Whether it's music or wallpaper or indeed a banana after that doesn't seem to me to make a lot of difference. If it's been _interesting_, then that's a good thing, no?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> If only you'd stopped at "it's an interesting idea".
> 
> That's all it needs to be.
> 
> Whether it's music or wallpaper or indeed a banana after that doesn't seem to me to make a lot of difference. If it's been _interesting_, then that's a good thing, no?


"Interesting" in itself though covers a lot of territory, from J. S. Bach to Terry Gilliam. They still worked in different media and with different artistic intentions.

To be honest, Valeska Gert, about whom I learned just today in an oblique way from one of SanAntone's comments, appears to have been far more interesting than Cage ever was. In my opinion.

I think what rankles some people about Cage is the insistence from some of his fans that he is to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

I don't wanna.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> "Interesting" in itself though covers a lot of territory, from J. S. Bach to Terry Gilliam. They still worked in different media and with different artistic intentions.


And so? What's to stop you appreciating them each for whatever it is _you_ think they've contributed?



consuono said:


> To be honest, Valeska Gert, about whom I learned just today in an oblique way from one of SanAntone's comments, appears to have been far more interesting than Cage ever was. In my opinion.


And your opinion is perfectly valid. But you've moved the goalposts again from 'interesting is good' to 'much more interesting' is better! Interesting will do me. That it's interesting in any way, shape or form seems to me to be a good thing. If we could agree on nothing but that, I'd count that a plus.



consuono said:


> I think what rankles some people about Cage is the insistence from some of his fans that he is to be taken with the utmost seriousness.
> 
> I don't wanna.


Well, I'm not a fan and (having checked today, because I wasn't sure), I have precisely zero John Cage in my collection. Silence or otherwise! So I'm not a fan. That of his non-silence output I've heard, I haven't enjoyed one iota. So. Count me as Devil's Advocate, if you must, but I'm not arguing from the middle ground because it's comfortable!

And there is undoubtedly a grey area in art where you think, 'my four-year old *Bitzer spaniel* could have painted better than that!' I honestly do not know where to come down in such debates. You look at history, and if you start coming down on Beethoven's 9th, Rite of Spring, and Lord knows what else... you'll be on the wrong side of history! My default, "safe" position is: one needn't decide. Either you enjoy it or you don't. More than that, on either side, needn't be the cause of a punch-up.

Can a 'it's not music' afficionado at least acknowledge that some people might enjoy 4½ minutes of self-reflection before the start of a concert? Dunno. It's my last throw.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> And so? What's to stop you appreciating them each for whatever it is _you_ think they've contributed?


It doesn't, but one's a composer and the other's a filmmaker. I'm not going to call Gilliam's _Brazil_ one of the most absorbing musical works since the Well Tempered Clavier.



> And your opinion is perfectly valid. But you've moved the goalposts again from 'interesting is good' to 'much more interesting' is better! ...


That's not moving any goalposts; that's a pretty logically basic statement.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

consuono said:


> It doesn't, but one's a composer and the other's a filmmaker. I'm not going to call Gilliam's _Brazil_ one of the most absorbing musical works since the Well Tempered Clavier.
> 
> That's not moving any goalposts; that's a pretty logically basic statement.


OK, you're not even close to moving an inch logically, but moving discursive goalposts around the pitch is fine... so further debate seems pointless, as I feared.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> OK, you're not even close to moving an inch logically, but moving discursive goalposts around the pitch is fine... so further debate seems pointless, as I feared.


Saying "much more interesting is better than interesting" is moving goalposts? :lol:

And for the record I've never said Cage isn't interesting. Björk is too, though. So?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> If only you'd stopped at "it's an interesting idea".
> 
> That's all it needs to be.
> 
> Whether it's music or wallpaper or indeed a banana after that doesn't seem to me to make a lot of difference. If it's been _interesting_, then that's a good thing, no?


It makes a difference to my point which is that 4'33'' isn't music, even if the concept is interesting. And I see that you don't care if it's labelled music or wallpaper or whatever as long as its novelty is recognized, which I have no issue with.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

SanAntone said:


> But it is not a "fringe group." You may not have seen my post, but I quoted the entry for John Cage from the standard reference text for classical music and musicians, the Grove Encyclopedia. He is considered a composer, and an important one at that, by the mainstream of classical music. While _4'33"_ is controversial, it has been embraced and performed by a large number of classical musicians over decades.
> 
> Your opinion that _4'33" _is not music is a personal view, nothing more, and you are of course welcome to hold it. But at the same time, you should be aware that there are those among the professional classical music community who do consider it music, and worthy of performance at their concerts.
> 
> Khatia Buniatshvili just included it on her latest recording Labyrinth (I am not a fan of recordings of 4'33" since it is more suitable for a live concert). She's not a member of a fringe group.


Well, the only argument that 4'33'' is music on technical grounds is that it is an extended rest; there is nothing else in its construction that would qualify it as music, unless you want to extend the definition of music to something nebulous.

And the concept of "recording" 4'33'' is pretty ridiculous, to be honest.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Well, the only argument that 4'33'' is music on technical grounds is that it is an extended rest; there is nothing else in its construction that would qualify it as music, unless you want to extend the definition of music to something nebulous.
> 
> And the concept of "recording" 4'33'' is pretty ridiculous, to be honest.


First sentence, I disagree with; second I agree with.

It seems to me the point of the piece is to make you confront 'silence' in a context. Devoid of that context (because you're listening to a CD at home, for example), the piece seems somewhat pointless.

The disagreement with the first sentence is on the old, familiar ground that it doesn't matter whether it's music or not for it to be treated as a serious work of art by a serious artist. (I've seen *Blue Poles* in the flesh. I know what serious artists can prodouce that make you wonder whether you're being taken for a laugh!)

Sorry. I've just seen who you were replying to. I don't agree it's music. I don't agree it's not-music. SanAntone has a different opinion. Ignore me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Well, the only argument that 4'33'' is music on technical grounds is that it is an extended rest; there is nothing else in its construction that would qualify it as music,


The performer is normally a centre of attention. The performance normally takes place in a concert situation. The audience listen to sounds.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

I just made myself a CD-R of eleven versions of 4'33".

I listened to _dozens _of versions of the piece online, many of which treated the piece as a joke, simply inserting 4½ minutes of dead silence. Of course, John Cage meant the piece to be a reversal of figure-and-ground, where the background noise in a concert hall becomes the foreground sound that the audience hears during the performance and pays attention to. Therefore I chose these eleven performances precisely because they included audience coughing, babies crying, people shuffling about in their seats in confusion at the unexpected gap.

There are five piano versions. There are three versions for full orchestra. One for wind band. One for percussion ensemble.

Perhaps the most poignant is the "pandemic version" by the Hartwick Wind Ensemble, whose Carnegie Hall debut scheduled for April 2020 had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the director asked each member of the ensemble to record their own 4'33", capturing the ambiences of each member's home environment, and blending them into a 4½ pandemic soundscape.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

In the late 20th century and now the 21st century there has grown up a movement among composers and musicians to shift the attention away from the composer an onto the listener. There were a number of works which set up situations describing how the listener would guide an interaction with an environment and sound.

Most of you are using an interpretation of "music" which has been superseded by work of a number of musicians and composers, who took _4'33"_ as their jumping off point, but took it to much more developed places. Art, artistic philosophies and music compositional processes develop and evolve. _4'33"_ started an process of evolution where some composers got interested in shifting the creative act from the composer to the listener, or at least an equal partnership between the two, which has resulted in dozens of works which exhibit this.

While I agree with AbsolutelyBaching that it doesn't really matter if _4'33"_ is considered "music" or not since it is a performance piece which can be experienced by an audience resulting in an aesthetic result. But that ignores the historic role that _4'33"_ has played and the generations of composers in its wake that I referenced above.

The classical music community has grown into something that is broader than one which only performs the standard repertory.

There have been several generations of composers whose background is not from the traditional classical music world, e.g. rock musicians, visual artists, sound engineers, and also some classically trained musicians. These younger composers and performers are not bound to previous paradigms of what has defined music, what is the role of the composer or performer, and even the role of the listener/audience.

I find this exciting to witness and experience their work. It doesn't replace the time honored classical repertory, but it is a legitimate extension of the classical tradition, IMO.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I’ve already given a, so far, incontroverted interpretation of what 4’33” is and it is supported by Cage’s own words and his investigation into Buddhist Zen. But we have above IMO all sorts of spinning that doesn’t pay any attention to what Cage actually said. Maybe there are a few that are having ethereal imaginative thoughts of ‘shifting the creative act from the composer to the listener’. That’s all very well and good for them, but that doesn’t satisfy any conceivable definition of classical music.

On the other hand when it comes specifically to 4’33”, it also occurs to me that after I posted that the musicians are not doing anything and that it is the audience that is listening while the musicians do nothing, I was told by an above poster that my opinion was entirely irrelevant. And yet, this same poster now trots out a theory that is surprisingly close to what I had posted in so far as 4’33” is concerned.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

DaveM said:


> ...
> On the other hand when it comes specifically to 4'33", it also occurs to me that after I posted that the musicians are not doing anything and that it is the audience that is listening while the musicians do nothing, I was told by an above poster that my opinion was entirely irrelevant. And yet, this same poster now trots out a theory that is surprisingly close to what I had posted in so far as 4'33" is concerned.


I find it extremely odd that my opinion is irrelevant, but yet the only inherent value that any music has lies in the subjective opinion of the listener. I can only conclude that when it comes to Cage or similar composers the only allowable opinions are favorable ones. Now _those_ are relevant. You'd almost, _almost_ think that these people are telling us that there is some objective quality in Cage's output that I'm missing or ignoring. Otherwise I don't see the objection to my less-than-favorable view.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> On the other hand when it comes specifically to 4'33", it also occurs to me that after I posted that the musicians are not doing anything.


That's not true, look at the score.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> My opinion:
> The message or concept behind 4'33" is closer to an exercise in Mindfulness than listening to an actual classical music performance.


I am sure that this is not true, at least if by mindfulness you mean the state developed in some Buddhist meditations (is that why you gave it a capital M?) That state is quite complex, it needs a certain preparation and a posture. The points you call evidence which I snipped from the post (sorry, it's too hard to get them back, I'm using a phone) aren't evidence at all - especially given the absurdity of the idea.

If you go to a Buddhist temple for a mindfulness practice you'll see that I'm right and you're wrong straight away.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

If someone told me that they enjoyed 4'33 more than something like St. Matthew's Passion, then I would think that they are some kind of weirdo.

BUT—and here's the important part—that person is not forced to believe anything otherwise. If they truly got more enjoyment out of random audience sounds, then good for them. They aren't "objectively" wrong for enjoying it.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> That's not true, look at the score.


Oh okay, you want to play semantics: The musicians are not playing instruments. That's what musicians do. They aren't doing it here. As far as classical music is concerned, they are not doing anything.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Oh okay, you want to play semantics: The musicians are not playing instruments. That's what musicians do. They aren't doing it here. As far as classical music is concerned, they are not doing anything.


They do it because Cage is asking the audience to listen to the sounds in the same way as they would listen to a piece of music.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I am sure that this is not true, at least if by mindfulness you mean the state developed in some Buddhist meditations (is that why you gave it a capital M?) That state is quite complex, it needs a certain preparation and a posture. The points you call evidence which I snipped from the post (sorry, it's too hard to get them back, I'm using a phone) aren't evidence at all - especially given *the absurdity of the idea.*
> 
> If you go to a Buddhist temple for a mindfulness practice you'll see that I'm right and you're wrong straight away.


Well it seems that you have an absurd and uneducated idea how Mindfulness has been applied to daily living. And it appears that you did a quick Google search before posting. I'm very familiar about the subject, read books about it and applied it to my daily living. It is remarkably simple to apply and surprising in its immediate results. You don't have to go to a Buddhist temple to learn or practice it. Any Buddhist will tell you that.

I didn't come up with the idea of a connection of the meaning behind 4'33" with some Buddhist-based practices. It's in the Wiki and has been mentioned elsewhere also. Meditation and mindfulness which originated from Buddhist practices are two different things. I've benefited from both. In mindfulness, contrary to meditation, you actually concentrate on what is happening around you, including sounds and view them objectively without judgment. You put those things 'out there' without internalizing. That's only a simplistic interpretation, the meaning behind it and beneficial result is more profound.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> They do it because Cage is asking the audience to listen to the sounds in the same way as they would listen to a piece of music.


Listen to what sounds?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

The sounds of the audience. The sound of the performer turning the pages of the score. The ambience in the concert hall. The rumble of traffic outside. Their own hearts beating.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

NoCoPilot said:


> The sounds of the audience. The sound of the performer turning the pages of the score. The ambience in the concert hall. The rumble of traffic outside. Their own hearts beating.


Exactly. I had said that the musicians are doing nothing ie. not playing music and Mandryka's reply was_ 'That's not true; look at the score'_ and_ 'They do it because Cage is asking the audience to listen to the sounds in the same way as they would listen to a piece of music.'_

I repeat, the musicians are not performing or playing anything. Nothing in the score tells the musicians to do anything during 4'33". It's the audience that is being asked to listen.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Imagine a triangle player in a large orchestra, playing maybe a Bruckner symphony (for instance). He sits on a stool in the back of the percussion section until bar 243, where he stands up and strikes his triangle once.

Would you say the rest of the time "he's not playing music"?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

chu42 said:


> If someone told me that they enjoyed 4'33 more than something like St. Matthew's Passion, then I would think that they are some kind of weirdo.
> ...


But -- and here's the important question --

Why?


NoCoPilot said:


> Imagine a triangle player in a large orchestra, playing maybe a Bruckner symphony (for instance). He sits on a stool in the back of the percussion section until bar 243, where he stands up and strikes his triangle once.
> 
> Would you say the rest of the time "he's not playing music"?


Yes, I'd say that. In the score that silence is indicated by rests, which means "not playing music". Now imagine a score in which a triangle is called for but the triangle never ever plays. Pointless or what?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

NoCoPilot said:


> Imagine a triangle player in a large orchestra, playing maybe a Bruckner symphony (for instance). He sits on a stool in the back of the percussion section until bar 243, where he stands up and strikes his triangle once.
> 
> Would you say the rest of the time "he's not playing music"?


As a kid having played a violin (very badly), a conductor friend, for some strange reason invites me to bring my violin and come and sit with the 2nd violins through a performance of Beethoven's 5th, but emphasizes to be sure not to play a note. Was what I was doing different than what that triangle player was doing during 'the rest of the time'?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

consuono said:


> Yes, I'd say that. In the score that silence is indicated by rests, which means "not playing music". Now imagine a score in which a triangle is called for but the triangle never ever plays. Pointless or what?


Ask a chef to go to the kitchen but don't cook and serve an empty plate.
Ask an engineer to design an internal combustion engine for a car but don't provide fuel.
Ask an artist to paint but don't provide canvass. There are similarly halfwit works showing blank canvass on walls of "contemporary" art museums (i.e. wasting tax payers money)


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> Ask a chef to go to the kitchen but don't cook and serve an empty plate..


You could have a variation of 4'33" whereby the chef instructs the audience to ignore the empty plate and concentrate on the smells in the restaurant for 4'33".


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

consuono said:


> But -- and here's the important question --
> 
> Why?


Because it is completely out of line with my own personal beliefs. Just as its weird that someone likes the taste of natto since I don't like the taste of natto.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

DaveM said:


> You could have a variation of 4'33" whereby the chef instructs the audience to ignore the empty plate and concentrate on the smells in the restaurant for 4'33".


:lol: bravo! Five star restaurant!


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

chu42 said:


> Because it is completely out of line with my own personal beliefs. Just as its weird that someone likes the taste of natto since I don't like the taste of natto.


And what "personal beliefs" would those be?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

DaveM said:


> As a kid having played a violin (very badly), a conductor friend, for some strange reason invites me to bring my violin and come and sit with the 2nd violins through a performance of Beethoven's 5th, but emphasizes to be sure not to play a note. Was what I was doing different than what that triangle player was doing during 'the rest of the time'?


Learning to overcome stage fright?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

DaveM said:


> You could have a variation of 4'33" whereby the chef instructs the audience to ignore the empty plate and concentrate on the smells in the restaurant for 4'33".


AND pay for a full meal. BTW I can't really find a full score of 4'33" since it's copyrighted. Edition Peters sells it for $12.95. I got a copy of Musical Offering and Art of Fugue in one volume for a couple of bucks more than that. Highway robbery! :lol:

PS...anyone else suspect that that's Edition Peters' best-selling Cage score?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> Ask an artist to paint but don't provide canvass. There are similarly halfwit works showing blank canvass on walls of "contemporary" art museums (i.e. wasting tax payers money)


Robert Rauchenberg's "White Paintings" influenced Cage's decision to create 4'33", as did his visiting an anechoic chamber. 1952 was pretty early for conceptual art; this sort of thing didn't become mainstream until Andy Warhol et al. But 'conceptual art' is still art, of a sort, regardless of whether you think it's worthwhile or not.

"Public dollars"? Yeah, that's probably not a popular use of tax money. I don't think Cage was grant-supported though.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> 1952 was pretty early for conceptual art


It's at least as old as the Dadaists. That's really the source for 4'33" and the like, I'd say. It wasn't really trailblazing in 1952. You could say 1952 was a little late for Dadaism.


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## erki (Feb 17, 2020)

consuono said:


> ... 1952 was a little late for Dadaism.


Dada lives healthy life in me rather well for instance. I feel that "western" civilisation is almost ready for good overhaul of kicking dadaism.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> Robert Rauchenberg's "White Paintings" influenced Cage's decision to create 4'33", as did his visiting an anechoic chamber. 1952 was pretty early for conceptual art; this sort of thing didn't become mainstream until Andy Warhol et al. But 'conceptual art' is still art, of a sort, regardless of whether you think it's worthwhile or not.
> 
> "Public dollars"? Yeah, that's probably not a popular use of tax money. I don't think Cage was grant-supported though.


Cage supported himself throughout his career from fees for performances (in the early days with the Cunningham dance company), teaching, commissions and speaking engagements, writing/publishing. The Contemporary Music manager at Edition Peters said in a video that today Cage would make a comfortable living off his royalties since the Cage catalog is their highest revenue earner among American composers.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

"Another, perhaps richer, seam of [Peter] *Ablinger*'s work comprises what he calls _Listening Pieces_.

These take a number of forms, yet in each it is the body - as a pair of ears, a container for mental processing, and a location in space - that is foregrounded. One subset of these is his _Sitting and Hearing_ pieces. These involve arrangements of chairs set out in particular locations. The locations are generally chosen for their particular environmental acoustic, so _Listening Piece in Four Parts_ (2001) involved a four-by-five arrangement of chairs set up on a beach, on a suburban baseball field, in a downtown parking lot, and beside a wind farm.

As Ablinger describes, the gridded arrangement of chairs not only recalls serial forms of minimalist art but also acts as a "quotation of an audience space that can actually be used to sit down and enjoy the given situation as a concert."

Other listening pieces are more prescriptive about what type of action the listener must do, or at least what it is they should be attending to. _Listening Piece in Two Parts_ (2005) (which belongs to another subseries of works Ablinger calls _Transition Pieces_) calls for two adjacent rooms of different sizes and a board placed at either side of the entrance from one room to the other. Board one, in the small room at the entrance to the large room, reads, "Part 1: The change from the large room to the small one." Board two, at the other side of the entrance, reads, "Part 2: The change from the small room to the large one."

These regions of Ablinger's work use listening to indicate the particular interrelation between the body and silence. Yet while his pieces are conceptually rich and his output in this area diverse, each individual work is compositionally - in a more or less old-fashioned sense - quite limited. The work sets up a state of listening or a dynamic listening event, but it doesn't organize that listening other than in a simple on-off sense, supplemented by the suggestions offered by the work's location."

- _Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989_ by *Tim Rutherford-Johnson*


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing I'd like to know about this period -- maybe Sanantone or another American knows. Here's Lucier talking about how he had a brain wave amplifier, how did the pioneers of electronic music, Lucier, Stockhausen etc, get the money for the technology? I mean, imagine a young composer now wants access to the latest computer equipment . . .


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> One thing I'd like to know about this period -- maybe Sanantone or another American knows. Here's Lucier talking about how he had a brain wave amplifier, how did the pioneers of electronic music, Lucier, Stockhausen etc, get the money for the technology? I mean, imagine a young composer now wants access to the latest computer equipment . . .


I don't know anything about how they financed their projects. The _Musique concrète_ pioneers were just using tape recorders. Some made their own equipment, others had access through a university to equipment, like the Bell Lab.

But the aspect he talks about, Cage's encouraging of other composers, his generosity, the "always saying yes" aspect is one thing about him I most admire about John Cage.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> But the aspect he talks about, Cage's encouraging of other composers, his generosity, the "always saying yes" aspect is one thing about him I most admire about John Cage.


Did you know Cage?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Did you know Cage?


No.

But when I was at music school, studying composition, my professor told me I was too much influenced by John Cage. I told him I knew very little about him. My teacher assumed that some of my ideas about composing came from Cage, but it was a coincidence.

I naturally found Cage's music, processes, and ideas in sync with my own, and have been enjoying his work ever since.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

"Much greater responsibility (and involvement) is given to the listener in *David Dunn*'s _Purposeful Listening in Complex States of Time_ (1997-8), along with a substantial reduction in their freedom to choose how to listen. Again there are no composed sounds, and again the listener/ performer is required to direct their attention toward their sounding environment. However, Dunn goes much further than Ablinger in prescribing how the listener/ performer's attention is to be directed.

"There are twenty pages to the score, each representing a separate three-minute composition that is to be realized in a different outdoor environment with a low level of ambient sound. Performances should be documented through sound recordings, photographs, and so on. Within each three-minute piece, successive listening states are notated using a graphical system of noteheads, beams, and staff lines similar to standard musical notation. The duration of each listening state is marked in numbers of seconds. The position of noteheads above, between, or below the two staff lines indicates whether attention is to be at sky level, body level, or ground level. Arrows around the noteheads indicate the direction in which attention should be focused. One, two, or three plus signs indicate proximity to the body (from adjacent to far away). Finally, colors indicate the time state of the sound being listened to: blue for a real-time sound event, gold for a remembered sound event, red for an imagined future sound, and black for "a neutral non-focused time duration.""

- _Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989_ by *Tim Rutherford-Johnson*


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> No.
> 
> But when I was at music school, studying composition, my professor told me I was too much influenced by John Cage. I told him I knew very little about him. My teacher assumed that some of my ideas about composing came from Cage, but it was a coincidence.
> 
> I naturally found Cage's music, processes, and ideas in sync with my own, and have been enjoying his work ever since.











Listening to Music for Changes this morning on this CD, and really enjoying it for some reason. The booklet makes something clear. Everyone says glibly that it was composed via chance operations, and there's truth in that, but it's far from the whole truth. Here's what she says about it

https://taniachen.com/music-of-changes


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Morton Feldman Interviewed by Charles Shere, July, 1967








> This wide ranging, literate, and always fascinating conversation between composer Morton Feldman and writer/composer/journalist (and former KPFA music director) Charles Shere touches on the work of various composers, performers, artists, and writers. Feldman talks about ways of composing, including his own, and to what degree a composer is "on the make" with regard to his audience.
> 
> The composers Feldman and Shere discuss include John Cage, Christian Wolff, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and Milton Babbitt. Surprisingly, Feldman admits to admiring Babbitt, and wishes that he himself could write serialized music freehand, like Babbitt.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

erki said:


> Dada lives healthy life in me rather well for instance. I feel that "western" civilisation is almost ready for good overhaul of kicking dadaism.


Western civilization has been under kicking Dadaism for a century already. I think it's primarily just a negative reaction to the status quo accumulated over centuries, with little of lasting value to offer. Existence can't be all reactive satire.


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## Christine (Sep 29, 2020)

My thoughts are, as a college degreed, financially independent entrepreneur, gifted writer and illustrator -- I fail to see what all the hullabaloo is about over this. I've "listened" to it on youtube with two different orchestras, and this is nothing but confused looks and dead silence. Why is this so historic? Boring as shht. What am I missing? I closed out on both videos after three minutes of insomnia-curing silence. I don't see the innovation or groundbreaking aspect of this. If this was a new thing TODAY rather than Cage's time, it'd never take off.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Christine said:


> My thoughts are, as a college degreed, financially independent entrepreneur, gifted writer and illustrator -- I fail to see what all the hullabaloo is about over this. I've "listened" to it on youtube with two different orchestras, and this is nothing but confused looks and dead silence. Why is this so historic? Boring as shht. What am I missing? I closed out on both videos after three minutes of insomnia-curing silence. I don't see the innovation or groundbreaking aspect of this. If this was a new thing TODAY rather than Cage's time, it'd never take off.


I don't think it was at all innovative since, as has been pointed out many times, the concept had already been done for decades. Two things made this a "celebrity" work for Cage: more-extensive mass communication in 1952 compared to 1920, and the injection of Zen religiosity which was quite a thing in the 1950s.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> "Much greater responsibility (and involvement) is given to the listener in *David Dunn*'s _Purposeful Listening in Complex States of Time_ (1997-8), along with a substantial reduction in their freedom to choose how to listen. Again there are no composed sounds, and again the listener/ performer is required to direct their attention toward their sounding environment. However, Dunn goes much further than Ablinger in prescribing how the listener/ performer's attention is to be directed.
> 
> "There are twenty pages to the score, each representing a separate three-minute composition that is to be realized in a different outdoor environment with a low level of ambient sound. Performances should be documented through sound recordings, photographs, and so on. Within each three-minute piece, successive listening states are notated using a graphical system of noteheads, beams, and staff lines similar to standard musical notation. The duration of each listening state is marked in numbers of seconds. The position of noteheads above, between, or below the two staff lines indicates whether attention is to be at sky level, body level, or ground level. Arrows around the noteheads indicate the direction in which attention should be focused. One, two, or three plus signs indicate proximity to the body (from adjacent to far away). Finally, colors indicate the time state of the sound being listened to: blue for a real-time sound event, gold for a remembered sound event, red for an imagined future sound, and black for "a neutral non-focused time duration.""
> 
> - _Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989_ by *Tim Rutherford-Johnson*


"As a result of such notational detail, Dunn is able to describe ways of moving one's listening perspective through space and time that resemble the gestures and forms of sounding music. A good example of this occurs at the start of the first page. The first three events shorten in length, at three, two, and one seconds, respectively. They also move progressively in space, from behind the listener to the right of them, and from far away at ground level to close by and overhead. All three are marked as imaginary future events, but Dunn draws a curve between them, like a phrase mark in conventional notation, that indicates that all three are to be considered as a single dynamic movement. The effect is of a single upward-spiraling sweep, of some imagined, even fantastical, sound that coils around the listener.

"This dramatic, six-second movement is followed by its opposite: six seconds of static, unfocused attention. Only after this complimentary pair of ear-opening gestures is the listener asked to focus on a single real-time sound, at body level just behind them to their right. This lasts a full ten seconds, and if the whole sequence is executed faithfully it can prove a revelatory experience. Dunn's piece requires an extraordinary virtuosity of listening skill-the composer Warren Burt, whose website hosts Dunn's score, admits, "I've made it through a page or two of this score, but never have been able to do more than that."

Dunn's ambition, as he explains in an essay that serves as the work's preface, was to go "beyond the event horizon of 4'33"" and into "a different universe of musical perception where composition might be based upon or at the least inclusive of an awareness of the primacy of mind, where an emphasis is placed upon the processes of perception and not materials."

- Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Christine said:


> My thoughts are, as a college degreed, financially independent entrepreneur, gifted writer and illustrator -- I fail to see what all the hullabaloo is about over this. I've "listened" to it on youtube with two different orchestras, and this is nothing but confused looks and dead silence. Why is this so historic? Boring as shht. What am I missing? I closed out on both videos after three minutes of insomnia-curing silence. I don't see the innovation or groundbreaking aspect of this. If this was a new thing TODAY rather than Cage's time, it'd never take off.


You are missing the point. And although much hullabaloo is created by those who also miss the point, you can't really experience the work from YouTube. A live concert setting is the only place where 4'33" can be experienced.

You may still not "get it" or not care, or think it is garbage, that is clearly an option whenever you hear any music. Either you can appreciate the historic importance of the work as testified by countless musicologists, composers, and performers over the last 70 years, or not. It really doesn't matter what you think about the work - its place in the history of music is assured.

This forum is hardly the most important source of information about John Cage and 4'33" - this is an informal site filled with fans of Buckner, Mahler, and the rest of the standard repertory (I am a fan of the standard rep as well). However, aside from a few members, the attitudes here are rather uninformed about the issues raised by 4'33" which is easily seen by the remarks made in almost every post. Plus, there is a real hostility to the classical avant-garde, a number of TC members show no tolerance for composers whose careers have moved away from the paradigm of classical music represented by the standard repertory.

The majority of TC members simply don't care and don't join these threads, they are happy to talk endlessly about recordings of Bruckner, and the rest (nothing wrong with that, this is really what this forum is for).

The other group of anti-4'33" members drive the discussion with their hostility and constant harping on strawman issues. So, this is the source of the "hullabaloo."


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## erki (Feb 17, 2020)

changed my mind


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> Plus, there is a real hostility to the classical avant-garde, a number of TC members show no tolerance for composers whose careers have moved away from the paradigm of classical music represented by the standard repertory.


I'm hostile to Cage and the avant garde in the same way you're hostile to Mozart and John Williams. I'm not. And "no tolerance"? Where have I ever called for such music to be banned? I don't care what "countless musicologists, composers and performers" say about Cage or anyone else. Why should I? The place of 4'33" is as a novelty or something offbeat. It's not a mainstay, it's not a favorite. I think it inhabits the same territory as Satie's Vexations. Neither one is a pillar of culture. There are interesting ideas behind both. You are the one who sees things in stark black-and-white. Either you adore Cage and other "new music" composers, or you shut up about it. Otherwise you're hostile and intolerant. Bull****.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> However, aside from a few members, the attitudes here are rather uninformed about the issues raised by 4'33"


Well that's one view.

For myself, I'm not really hostile to any of this, and I usually enjoy the brouhaha that 4:33 threads on TC generate. This current one has been a blast, as usual.

I follow them and comment occasionally because I am waiting for someone to enlighten me about the "issues raised by 4:33". I am well aware that getting an audience who are attending a live musical performance to listen to whatever they hear while a performer delivers the piece - with that piece involving the performer not playing their piano or whatever - is a piece of performance art (if you will), and may be regarded by some as music and by others as not music. I well understand that it's not the same as sitting on your own in a field and listening to the sounds around. I can also see that it is different from meditation according to any one of the meditative practices which people follow.

I just don't think it's very interesting as a concept, and no one has yet persuaded me in all these pages and pages of discussion that it is. What I do find interesting is that some people feel really strongly the need to defend its status, and I don't really see why. There seems to be a tension in that the same person will say something equivalent to "each to their own" and then indicate that those who don't like 4:33 must be "uninformed about the issues". Perhaps some people are informed but not persuaded.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> You are missing the point. And although much hullabaloo is created by those who also miss the point, you can't really experience the work from YouTube. A live concert setting is the only place where 4'33" can be experienced.
> 
> You may still not "get it" or not care, or think it is garbage, that is clearly an option whenever you hear any music. Either you can appreciate the historic importance of the work as testified by countless musicologists, composers, and performers over the last 70 years, or not. *It really doesn't matter what you think about the work - its place in the history of music is assured.*


You keep saying that the opinion of those who don't care for 4'33" doesn't matter because "it's place in history of music is assured", but the fact is that _you don't know_. You don't know what people will be listening in fifty years. You don't know what they will think of the classical composers of today. You don't know what people then will think of classical music as a whole, or of the avant-garde classical of the last century. You just _don't know_. Have in mind that there are composers who caused "hullabaloo" two, three hundred years ago that are largely forgotten nowadays, and that this may well be the destiny of a figure such as Cage who, at the moment, has his acceptance as a great composer largely questioned even here in one the biggest communities of CM in the web.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Allerius said:


> You keep saying that the opinion of those who don't care for 4'33" doesn't matter because "it's place in history of music is assured", but the fact is that _you don't know_. You don't know what people will be listening in fifty years.


It's not even the first or the most interesting "piece of silent music":
https://www.talkclassical.com/69845-what-your-thoughts-433-a-4.html#post2011372
https://www.talkclassical.com/69845-what-your-thoughts-433-a-9.html#post2012515
https://www.talkclassical.com/69845-what-your-thoughts-433-a-7.html#post2011979


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> You keep saying that the opinion of those who don't care for 4'33" doesn't matter because "it's place in history of music is assured", but the fact is that _you don't know_. You don't know what people will be listening in fifty years. You don't know what they will think of the classical composers of today. You don't know what people then will think of classical music as a whole, or of the avant-garde classical of the last century. You just _don't know_. Have in mind that there are composers who caused "hullabaloo" two, three hundred years ago that are largely forgotten nowadays, and that this may be well be the destiny of a composer such as Cage who, at the moment, has his acceptance as a great composer largely questioned even here in one the biggest communities of CM in the web.


70 years is a pretty good test of time. And you must be kidding, using TC as a gauge? TC is nothing but a social club where fans of various backgrounds and education sit around and talk about classical music. Fine for entertainment but ultimately meaningless beyond this website.

While there are some academics, composers and others in the professional classical music community who discount Cage and are highly critical - the majority of opinion is settled, in the positive, on his work and the significance of _4'33"_.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> While there are some academics, composers and others in the professional classical music community who discount Cage and are highly critical - the majority of opinion is settled, in the positive, on his work and the significance of _4'33"_.


You see that's part of the issue. Academics, composers and other in the professional classical music community are not the entirety of those with opinions. Hence "the majority of opinion" is not settled by considering that group.

I have recently been engaging with the world of academia after a career in the wider world. The most striking thing is the groupthink and echo chamber aspect of what goes on. The key aspect of an academic career is to be in broad agreement with a sufficiently large group of influential academics who review papers for the prestigious journals. You need to enter their conversation on their terms, and say things that they will find interesting. The expressed opinions of academics are typically those of their particular echo chamber, which they need to parrot (with "interesting" tweaks) in order to see their careers thrive.

I am deeply wary of suggestions that those whose views should be respected in a field are the academics. It does smack somewhat of elitism.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Eclectic Al said:


> You see that's part of the issue. Academics, composers and other in the professional classical music community are not the entirety of those with opinions. Hence "the majority of opinion" is not settled by considering that group.
> 
> I have recently been engaging with the world of academia after a career in the wider world. The most striking thing is the groupthink and echo chamber aspect of what goes on. The key aspect of an academic career is to be in broad agreement with a sufficiently large group of influential academics who review papers for the prestigious journals. You need to enter their conversation on their terms, and say things that they will find interesting. The expressed opinions of academics are typically those of their particular echo chamber, which they need to parrot (with "interesting" tweaks) in order to see their careers thrive.
> 
> I am deeply wary of suggestions that those whose views should be respected in a field are the academics. It does smack somewhat of elitism.


But without relying on the conclusion of academics, you'd have to inevitably come to the conclusion that pop music is greater than classical music.

I myself do not rely on any such opinions. I judge music by how much personal enjoyment I get out of it.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> 70 years is a pretty good test of time. And you must be kidding, using TC as a gauge?* TC is nothing but a social club* where fans of various backgrounds and education sit around and talk about classical music. * Fine for entertainment but ultimately meaningless beyond this website.
> *
> While there are some academics, composers and others in the professional classical music community who discount Cage and are highly critical - *the majority of opinion is settled, in the positive* on his work and the significance of _4'33"_.


You have no proof of that whatsoever. At least we now know how uninformed and irrelevant you consider our opinions to be and it explains the tone of your recent posts.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

chu42 said:


> But without relying on the conclusion of academics, you'd have to inevitably come to the conclusion that pop music is greater than classical music.
> 
> I myself do not rely on any such opinions. I judge music by how much personal enjoyment I get out of it.


I'm generally with you on relying on my own enjoyment. I prefer classical music to pop music generally, but I'm not going to say one is greater than another, because I wouldn't know how to assess that.

I know that if I let a particular group of people (academics or others) define "greatness" by reference to things that they think make that up, then the "greatest" works will be ones which they value: it's a bit circular. Academics may include various avant garde works in the list, because they may well have a tendency to value novelty: they call it innovation or being progressive. A broader group might say the greatest works include stuff by The Beatles, and others might go for Radiohead, or Miles Davis. Classical music fans who are amateurs may well go for Beethoven, Bach, etc. Picking the "greatest" is pretty much pointless. As, I think, is looking to academics to tell you what is great.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Eclectic Al said:


> I just don't think it's very interesting as a concept, and no one has yet persuaded me in all these pages and pages of discussion that it is. What I do find interesting is that some people feel really strongly the need to defend its status, and I don't really see why. There seems to be a tension in that the same person will say something equivalent to "each to their own" and then indicate that those who don't like 4:33 must be "uninformed about the issues". Perhaps some people are informed but not persuaded.


I don't think anyone has said that "those who don't like 4:33 must be 'uninformed about the issues' ". If so, clearly that is incorrect. I think it's clear from reading this thread and the many others about 4'33" that many don't understand what the piece is about. Too many posts talk about the piece being silent. There have been extensive attempts to explain that 4'33" is not silent or about silence. Anyone reading about it would understand that aspect of the work.

No one must like the work, believe it's music, or find it of interest. I only marginally feel that Cage's view that all sound can be "heard" as music is something of interest. Still, I understand that many others view Cage's perspective is interesting, important, and musical. Serious discussions about the work do exist on TC though, unfortunately, all threads include mostly people disparaging Cage, insulting him, or making jokes (some of which are quite funny).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> No one must like the work, believe it's music, or find it of interest. I only marginally feel that Cage's view that all sound can be "heard" as music is something of interest.


That's ambiguous. Clearly you could have a symphony with a car horn in the percussion section, but that's not what he means.

But it's not easy to say what he did mean. Was it that all arrangements of sounds through time, even arrangements which are random in every way, can be perceived (by who?) as music?

I'm not at all sure any more -- partly because I'm not sure whether Cage's music was _entirely _made through chance operations. I just don't know how he got from the I Ching to the Music of Changes, from the star map to the Etudes Australes, from the garden to Ryoanji.

If anyone has a good reference with details on this -- please don't suggest wikipedia! -- please say.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

consuono said:


> I'm hostile to Cage and the avant garde in the same way you're hostile to Mozart and John Williams. I'm not.


You may not be hostile to Cage, but others on TC very clearly are. I have never seen a post referring to Mozart as charlatan or his music as garbage.



consuono said:


> And "no tolerance"? Where have I ever called for such music to be banned?


You may not have desired bans of avant-garde music, but there are countless posts stating that it is not classical music and sometimes asking why TC includes it.



consuono said:


> I don't care what "countless musicologists, composers and performers" say about Cage or anyone else. Why should I? The place of 4'33" is as a novelty or something offbeat. It's not a mainstay, it's not a favorite. I think it inhabits the same territory as Satie's Vexations. Neither one is a pillar of culture. There are interesting ideas behind both. You are the one who sees things in stark black-and-white. Either you adore Cage and other "new music" composers, or you shut up about it. Otherwise you're hostile and intolerant.


I am pretty sure no one has required that people either find Cage or other "new music" composers wonderful or "shut up" about it. I agree with SanAntone that some here are intolerant about new music. Generally, if people don't enjoy the music, they can say so and move on. Repeatedly, commenting that the music is awful, unlike anything classical, or other disparaging statements would appear to demonstrate an intolerance. Fine, many do not enjoy modern music. I hated much of it as well when I first came here. But the vast majority ignore the music and the threads or simply state their view and move on. They do not repeatedly bash the music.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> I don't think anyone has said that "those who don't like 4:33 must be 'uninformed about the issues' ". If so, clearly that is incorrect. I think it's clear from reading this thread and the many others about 4'33" that many don't understand what the piece is about. Too many posts talk about the piece being silent. There have been extensive attempts to explain that 4'33" is not silent or about silence. Anyone reading about it would understand that aspect of the work.
> 
> No one must like the work, believe it's music, or find it of interest. I only marginally feel that Cage's view that all sound can be "heard" as music is something of interest. Still, I understand that many others view Cage's perspective is interesting, important, and musical. Serious discussions about the work do exist on TC though, unfortunately, all threads include mostly people disparaging Cage, insulting him, or making jokes (some of which are quite funny).


Yeah - the jokes are one of the reasons I usually follow these threads. They always turn up by about page 20 or so.

On the point about "uninformed about the issues" though, that was a direct quote from an earlier post in relation to most people posting on this thread.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I have never seen a post referring to Mozart as charlatan or his music as garbage.
> 
> .


This is absolutely what I used to think for years and years and years. I think the first time I could see what the fuss was about with Mozart was hearing Lipatti play K310 -- I was fully grown and very familiar with classical music at the time -- c19 music really.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

at the end of the day it is the very thing a white guy with buddhist affectations would put it out there


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> That's ambiguous. Clearly you could have a symphony with a car horn in the percussion section, but that's not what he means.
> 
> But it's not easy to say what he did mean. Was it that all arrangements of sounds through time, even arrangements which are random in every way, can be perceived (by who?) as music?
> 
> ...


Cage used to go outside and listen to the sounds of traffic in New York City. He found the sounds fascinating. My understanding is that he felt that _anyone_ could hear _any sounds_ as music if that person chose to hear it that way.

This article has the quote, "My favorite piece of music is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet."

My understanding was that none of Cage's music was entirely made through chance operations.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> This is absolutely what I used to think for years and years and years. I think the first time I could see what the fuss was about with Mozart was hearing Lipatti play K310 -- I was fully grown and very familiar with classical music at the time -- c19 music really.


And how often did you post that on TC without suggesting that the view was yours and not obviously a fact?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> And how often did you post that on TC without suggesting that the view was yours and not obviously a fact?


Well, that's not my style.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> 70 years is a pretty good test of time. And you must be kidding, using TC as a gauge? TC is nothing but a social club where fans of various backgrounds and education sit around and talk about classical music. Fine for entertainment but ultimately meaningless beyond this website.
> 
> While there are some academics, composers and others in the professional classical music community who discount Cage and are highly critical - the majority of opinion is settled, in the positive, on his work and the significance of _4'33"_.


Yeah, TC is made up of average listeners, for the most part. If the only suitable audience that "gets it" is a bunch of chin-stroking musicologists, composers and performers, then I'd say Cage's legacy has a problem. There may be a few, but direct me to some sites where this supposedly seminal work is discussed _at all_.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Eclectic Al said:


> You see that's part of the issue. Academics, composers and other in the professional classical music community are not the entirety of those with opinions. Hence "the majority of opinion" is not settled by considering that group.
> 
> I have recently been engaging with the world of academia after a career in the wider world. The most striking thing is the groupthink and echo chamber aspect of what goes on. The key aspect of an academic career is to be in broad agreement with a sufficiently large group of influential academics who review papers for the prestigious journals. You need to enter their conversation on their terms, and say things that they will find interesting. The expressed opinions of academics are typically those of their particular echo chamber, which they need to parrot (with "interesting" tweaks) in order to see their careers thrive.
> 
> I am deeply wary of suggestions that those whose views should be respected in a field are the academics. It does smack somewhat of elitism.


When it comes to any specialized subject, it is the professionals in that area whose opinions are definitive. The amateurs, fans, Internet forum members, the general population, may weigh in among themselves but their views are nothing other than a casual, personal, judgment. For entertainment on this site, for example, they serve a purpose - but for the purposes of music history, they are irrelevant.

As I said several pages back, the standard reference text for classical music and musicians, The Grove Encyclopedia, is the best source of the professional consensus on John Cage, as it is for any classical composer, conductor and performer.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> You may not be hostile to Cage, but others on TC very clearly are. I have never seen a post referring to Mozart as charlatan or his music as garbage.
> 
> You may not have desired bans of avant-garde music, but there are countless posts stating that it is not classical music and sometimes asking why TC includes it.
> 
> I am pretty sure no one has required that people either find Cage or other "new music" composers wonderful or "shut up" about it. I agree with SanAntone that some here are intolerant about new music. Generally, if people don't enjoy the music, they can say so and move on. Repeatedly, commenting that the music is awful, unlike anything classical, or other disparaging statements would appear to demonstrate an intolerance. Fine, many do not enjoy modern music. I hated much of it as well when I first came here. But the vast majority ignore the music and the threads or simply state their view and move on. They do not repeatedly bash the music.


I saw a pretty robust "Mozart is overrated" thread and I don't think even hammeredklavier cried about it. I've seen Mozart described as dull and frilly and lacking substance. It's not like every comment on Cage is denouncing him as a charlatan, either. I never have.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Eclectic Al said:


> On the point about "uninformed about the issues" though, that was a direct quote from an earlier post in relation to most people posting on this thread.


The exact quote is:



SanAntone said:


> However, aside from a few members, the attitudes here are rather uninformed about the issues raised by 4'33" which is easily seen by the remarks made in almost every post.


I think that's not unreasonable given what I've read here. I honestly believe many either do not know much about what Cage was trying to do with 4'33" or they post without showing that knowledge. People can certainly believe that 4'33" is useless and unimportant, but in most arguments there is a rationale that attempts to show an understanding of why others believe it is important. Otherwise, the comment doesn't add much to anyone's understanding.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> Well, that's not my style.


Exactly.............


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> *I don't think anyone has said that "those who don't like 4:33 must be 'uninformed about the issues' ". If so, clearly that is incorrect. I think it's clear from reading this thread and the many others about 4'33" that many don't understand what the piece is about.* Too many posts talk about the piece being silent. There have been extensive attempts to explain that 4'33" is not silent or about silence. Anyone reading about it would understand that aspect of the work.
> 
> *No one must like the work, believe it's music, or find it of interest.* I only marginally feel that Cage's view that all sound can be "heard" as music is something of interest. Still, I understand that many others view Cage's perspective is interesting, important, and musical. Serious discussions about the work do exist on TC though, unfortunately, all threads include mostly people disparaging Cage, insulting him, or making jokes (some of which are quite funny).


I've bolded what appears to be a contradiction in your first few senteces: "uninformed about the issues" (my phrase, i.e. the issues the work addresses) and your "many don't understand what the piece is about" are really saying the same thing.

The countless number of times people have lampooned _4'33"_ because the performer doesn't play anything clearly are uninformed about the issues, or as you would say, don't understand what the work is about.

The second bolded phrase I've also stressed. Just like with any classical work, our responses will vary according to our interests and taste.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> The exact quote is:
> 
> I think that's not unreasonable given what I've read here. I honestly believe many either do not know much about what Cage was trying to do with 4'33" or they post without showing that knowledge. People can certainly believe that 4'33" is useless and unimportant, but in most arguments there is a rationale that attempts to show an understanding of why others believe it is important. Otherwise, the comment doesn't add much to anyone's understanding.


That is indeed the whole quote. I must admit, though, that I am speculating that the few who are deemed to be informed about the issues will have a massive (complete?) overlap with those who think 4:33 is an important work. Perhaps that's an unfair speculation.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> I am pretty sure no one has required that people either find Cage or other "new music" composers wonderful or "shut up" about it. I agree with SanAntone that some here are intolerant about new music.


By the way, what exactly is meant by "intolerant"? It's a politically loaded term and I don't really think that it covers "I don't like this composer/work/era/style". I think the only thing it would probably cover is "this should not be played", and I don't think I've ever seen that.

Also I'm puzzled as to why all.opinions are subjective at their core, including those of musicologists and other in the intelligentsia, but my negative subjective opinion causes butt-hurt. Bach's been criticized. If someone wants to call him a charlatan, I can just laugh it off.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

consuono said:


> I'm hostile to Cage and the avant garde in the same way you're hostile to Mozart and John Williams.


I am not hostile to Mozart, I listen to his music often, consider him among my favorite composers and have never made a negative comment about his music anywhere. As for John Williams, I made a few posts in a thread questioning his status as anything other than a film composer, of which I said he was one of the best. After learning about his concert works, I later amended my view, apologized for my earlier uninformed statements, and didn't post in the tread anymore.

Your behavior in any thread about John Cage is vastly different. And because you cannot discuss this honestly, there is no reason for me to concern myself with your contributions.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

consuono said:


> I saw a pretty robust "Mozart is overrated" thread and I don't think even hammeredklavier cried about it. I've seen Mozart described as dull and frilly and lacking substance. It's not like every comment on Cage is denouncing him as a charlatan, either. I never have.


The difference between "Mozart is overrated" and "Mozart is a charlatan", "Mozart's music is garbage", or "Mozart is a laughing stock" is let's say rather sizable.

There actually was someone who used to post that Mozart's music sounded like "soggy **** cheeks slapping together", but most of us just felt he was being silly rather than serious.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> When it comes to any specialized subject, it is the professionals in that area whose opinions are definitive. The amateurs, fans, Internet forum members, the general population, may weigh in among themselves but their views are nothing other than a casual, personal, judgment. For entertainment on this site, for example, they serve a purpose - but for the purposes of music history, they are irrelevant.
> 
> As I said several pages back, the standard reference text for classical music and musicians, The Grove Encyclopedia, is the best source of the professional consensus on John Cage, as it is for any classical composer, conductor and performer.


You see that's where we disagree. I don't think anyone's opinion is definitive. Even in the hard sciences understanding moves on and the current favourite variant of string theory or whatever in physics is not definitive - that's the whole point of science.

When it comes to the arts I think it is even less possible to argue that opinions are definitive. As far as "music history" goes, I really don't care at all about that, but would just note that music history will presumably be written by music historians, who will tend to be academics, so it is a bit of a foregone conclusion that the music history being written at a time will suggest that the opinions of the academics at the time are the definitive opinion.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

SanAntone said:


> I've bolded what appears to be a contradiction in your first few senteces: "uninformed about the issues" (my phrase, i.e. the issues the work addresses) and your "many don't understand what the piece is about" are really saying the same thing.
> 
> The countless number of times people have lampooned _4'33"_ because the performer doesn't play anything clearly are uninformed about the issues, or as you would say, don't understand what the work is about.
> 
> The second bolded phrase I've also stressed. Just like with any classical work, our responses will vary according to our interests and taste.


I was attempting to agree with your comments and defend them. As far as I know, we do agree on your views.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> Your behavior in any thread about John Cage is vastly different. And because you cannot discuss this honestly, there is no reason for me to concern myself with your contributions.


What, my horrible offense is not caring too much for Cage? So what? I didn't say anything personal against the guy.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Eclectic Al said:


> That is indeed the whole quote. I must admit, though, that I am speculating that the few who are deemed to be informed about the issues will have a massive (complete?) overlap with those who think 4:33 is an important work. Perhaps that's an unfair speculation.


Do you mean "...I am speculating that the few who are deemed to be informed about the issues will _not_ have a massive (complete?) overlap with those who think 4:33 is an important work"?

I'm close to certain that not all who are informed about the work believe it to be important.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> There actually was someone who used to post that Mozart's music sounded like "soggy **** cheeks slapping together", but most of us just felt he was being silly rather than serious.


How can you be sure? What does it matter? Mozart's music can speak for itself.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Eclectic Al said:


> You see that's where we disagree. I don't think anyone's opinion is definitive. Even in the hard sciences understanding moves on and the current favourite variant of string theory or whatever in physics is not definitive - that's the whole point of science.
> 
> When it comes to the art I think it is even less possible to argue that opinions are definitive. As far as "music history" goes, I really don't care at all about that, but would just note that music history will presumably be written by music historians, who will tend to be academics, so it is a bit of a foregone conclusion that the music history being written at a time will suggest that the opinions of the academics at the time are the definitive opinion.


Science does have currently accepted theories. That may change as new information is discovered, but it is not like there isn't a consensus about much of the work. You are saying that someone without the necessary training in physics, that their opinion is just as valid as a scientist who is working in the field. You must be joking.

Music has its professionals as well, those who specialize in periods and styles and composers. They have done the research, written books about the music and composers, often teach the subject, and are the most educated on the issues and history and are best suited to have an informed opinion.

You may wish to discard these professional opinions cavalierly, but you might as well do the same thing when someone lampoons string theory who doesn't understand the issues or vocabulary to even talk about it coherently.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> Do you mean "...I am speculating that the few who are deemed to be informed about the issues will _not_ have a massive (complete?) overlap with those who think 4:33 is an important work"?
> 
> I'm close to certain that not all who are informed about the work believe it to be important.


Which I also said. There are a minority of classical music professionals who disagree about Cage and 4'33" but they are in the minority.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> I was attempting to agree with your comments and defend them. As far as I know, we do agree on your views.


I didn't see that at first, but do now.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Should I request this theard to be closed? Reading the posts here seem to indicate that the theard has lost its purpose, everything has been said, and post now is just a rehashed of old topics.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

consuono said:


> Also I'm puzzled as to why all.opinions are subjective at their core, including those of musicologists and other in the intelligentsia, but my negative subjective opinion causes butt-hurt. Bach's been criticized. If someone wants to call him a charlatan, I can just laugh it off.


You are defending yourself, but I think the issue is that, over time on TC, many people have posted disparagingly about avant-garde or modern music. Those who enjoy the music find it difficult to see such comments on a classical music forum. The complaint has been that threads started to appreciate modern music have included many insults, jokes, ridicule, etc., and this behavior is simply different from that seen concerning other music.

Yes, there are occasional negative comments about Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, but they are rare and not couched in ridicule. I understand how those who adore modern music take those comments personally and find that aspect of TC exceedingly unpleasant.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Which I also said. There are a minority of classical music professionals who disagree about Cage and 4'33" but they are in the minority.


I don't know if they're in the minority or not, but what difference does it make one way or the other? Their subjective opinion is just as valid. The gist of your whole shpiel is that we nasty naysayers should just defer to our betters. If Cage's legacy were so secure and settled, you wouldn't be here policing every comment. I don't go around sniffing for slights against Bach.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Conrad2 said:


> Should I request this theard to be closed? Reading the posts here seem to indicate that the theard has lost its purpose, everything has been said, and post now is just a rehashed of old topics.


I think it should be closed for the reason you stated. But I thought you started it, and could close it yourself.


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

SanAntone said:


> I think it should be closed for the reason you stated. But I thought you started it, and could close it yourself.


Wait, I thought only mods could do that? If not how do I closed a theard? Unless anyone want to add anything to this topic that is original and constructive, then the theard should be closed. It's sad it has come to this. I will give it a hour before requesting this theard to be close, in case anyone want to add something.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Conrad2 said:


> Wait, I thought only mods could do that? If not how do I closed a theard? Unless anyone want to add anything to this topic that is original and constructive, then the theard should be closed. It's sad it has come to this.


Yes, only moderators can close threads. Also simply because the OP wishes the thread closed does not ensure that it will be. If an OP asks for us to close a thread, we will consider whether the thread is still constructive or enjoyed by the TC community.

This thread does appear to be rehashing earlier comments with nothing new. Thread closed.


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