Please stop referencing 4'33" by John Cage

xpost

Hahahaha!

Ah, you're no doubt right about that, yes. I've only seen them in the NY Guggenheim, under harsh fluourescent lighting, and this just never occured to me, but yep, of course, makes lots of sense.

jim ru sure the LENGTH-determined-by-chance is in nyman and silence?

Um...those were the places where I thought I'd read it, and seem the most likely sources. You're making me doubt myself slightly now, but I'd definitely seen this explanation before, and it wasn't at wikipedia. I'll check when I get home tonight.

There is no such thing as absolute silence. If you have your record player off, your room and the world are still filled with noise. However, 4'33" is not a composition, it's a field recording. The only element of composition is the choice to do nothing, but even Cage himself admits that the sound of the audience is the focus of the piece. I am happy to accept 4'33" as a field recording, but so long as people insist that it is a composition, I will continue to make jokes about it. Thx, bye.

(i think it is closer to the erased drawings, with its non nihillist implications of negation)

If that was Cage's intention with the piece, then I'd have to say he failed, because despite my familiarity with his piece, I still don't think of any random 4 minutes of ambient noise as being music. I mean you could paraphrase Cage's composition as basically the statement: "Everything is music!" To which the natural response would be: "No, it isn't." Which is not to say it isn't a clever gesture - probably even more clever than Duchamp's famous urinal, when you think about it.

interesting that with computer technology you can make a DDD version of 4'33" leaving you with a version tainted only by the playback mechanism and not the recording mechanism. 'tainted'. would compress down to an mp3 pretty well too 8)

Just as well, as I've got some of his that are right stinkers

Mike Batt to thread!

yeah, in '52 at a small chapel in the woods near woodstock, ny.

I think a big part of the idea behind the piece is to force the audience to think of the ambient noise as music, as no different from other "compositions."

er, not exactly. you could say maybe his imaginary landscape radio pieces achieved that specific goal more closely, but 4'33" is more about performance than sound, obv.

thank you douglas for bringing up 0'00", which is another variation on the theme.

anyway, 4'33" (and many other cage pieces) really exploded the entire musical world open to consider things that had only been the realm of obscure wackos (like, say, the futurists). mark s is gonna hate me for this simplification, but it led directly to fluxus which led directly to the dream syndicate which led directly to the velvet underground (among many many other musical things), etc., etc., you know the drill.

It's tonight! The theme is "bear suits"! I would go, but I'm too poor to afford the admission fee of $5.
-- n/a (nu...), February 15th, 2005 11:48 AM. (Nick A.) (link)

Nick's right. I'm probably gonna talk about The College Dropout and Marcel Dzama and my awesome idea for a New Yorker cartoon. However: I'm worried that the show itself has been getting into a rut, though, lately. Too many of the same performers, not enough outside interest being built up. If anyone knows of any artists or performers in Chicago that might want to read poetry/play music/show a film/tell jokes/etc. for 15 minutes on stage at a rock club, send 'em my way!

jaymc, you should talk about these photos by Carlee Fernandez: http://www.ahgallery.com/image%20pages/fernandez.bear-studies.html

er, not exactly. you could say maybe his imaginary landscape radio pieces achieved that specific goal more closely, but 4'33" is more about performance than sound, obv.

Oh, I'm not sure about that. I can't think of Cage ever talking about that piece as anything other than sound, a chance for listening. Yes, there's some element of performance in it, just like there is all his music, but like all his music it's mostly an invitation to listen.

The only time I've seen it performed live, the performance-y angle was really played up. The original version, with three movements, was played, and there was a feeling of "hey, we're playing 4'33"!", which didn't feel right at all.

I'm not sure it's possible to give a good performance of it anymore.

But that said, 4'33" needs less analysis, more listening to.

Can we all talk about Fifty-Eight instead?

whoa that sounds awful.

I'm not sure it's possible to give a good performance of it anymore.

you're probably right. but that doesn't mean it can't still be talked about or analyzed. it (along with a lot of other things cage did) did change things.