# "Silent" music



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...l_compositions

Cage's 4'33" is often mis-categorized as "silent" (even in the WIK entry linked above: _List of silent musical compositions _from which this thread was hastily thrown-together) because it concerns undetermined sounds which occur within a specified duration *only during a presentation.*

There are two different ways of conceiving time:

1.) Time as part of the fundamental structure of the universe-a dimension independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. In this view, time is a kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", or an entity that "flows." Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.

Or, we can say:

2.) Time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure, or "structure of being" (together with space and number) within which humans experience, sequence, and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable; nor can it be travelled (as we would travel across a space). This is basically a statement that time is tied to "being-in-time." This is the God-centric or "sacred" view of time, which is reflected in our conventions of measuring time differently than objects or quantities. Older clock-faces have no zero, babies are not "zero " years old, the calendar has no "zero" day or month, i.e., time has a start and a finish which is measured by duration.

Music is experienced as a duration, so "Silence in music" would have to be _experienced_ as _a duration of time;_ in order to experience "silence," _some duration of time would have to pass._ Thus, silence is experienced as a _quantity of time._ Therefore, "silent music" is only possible as a result of_being-in-time._ Otherwise, the _idea of silence _is just that: an idea. It cannot exist except as an artistic concept.

Using the principle of Privatio boni,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatio_boni

...we next have to ask the question: can "silence" really exist, or is this simply an artistic notion? In Cage's book Silence, he describes hearing his heart beat and nervous system in an otherwise clinically-controlled "anechoic" chamber which is supposedly totally silent.

So in Cage's view, _true absolute silence is not possible to experience because we are "beings-in-time."_ Any other notion of "silence" is just that: a notion or artistic fantasy.

If we use the doctrine of Privatio boni and conclude that "silence only exists as an absence of sound," and not as a tangible "thing" in itself, then Cage's 4'33" is seen as it really is: an affirmation of existence and being, in which "being" is primary, fundamental, and sacred; a "holy" duration being, not silent, but filled with sound and the sacredness of being.

Otherwise, he would have named it "4'33" of silence."


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