4′33″

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Three movements, no notes.
Three movements, no notes.

4′33″ is an elaborate practical joke by avant-garde composer John Cage, a piece of music consisting of "four and a half minutes of silence." Though first "performed" on the piano, the piece was composed for any instrument or instruments and is structured in three movements. The success of the joke is seen in that it is still regarded as a serious musical composition by many.

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[edit] Background and influences

In 1951, Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor will absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than bouncing them back as echoes. They are also externally sound-proofed. Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but he wrote later, "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." [1]

There has been some skepticism about the accuracy of the engineer's explanation, especially being able to hear one's own nervous system (a mild case of tinnitus might be a more likely explanation for hearing a quiet, high-pitched sound). Whatever the truth of these explanations, Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."[2] The realisation as he saw it of the impossibility of silence led to the composition of his most notorious piece, 4′33″.

Cage wrote in "A Composer's Confessions" (1948) that he had the desire to "compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to the Muzak Co. It will be 4 [and a half] minutes long — these being the standard lengths of 'canned' music, and its title will be 'Silent Prayer'. It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and shape or fragrance of a flower. The ending will approach imperceptibly."[3]

Another cited influence for this piece came from the field of the visual arts. Cage's friend and sometimes colleague Robert Rauschenberg had produced, in 1951, a series of white paintings, seemingly "blank" canvases (though painted with white house paint) that in fact change according to varying light conditions in the rooms in which they were hung, the shadows of people in the room and so on. This inspired Cage to use a similar idea as he later stated, "Actually what pushed me into it was not guts but the example of Robert Rauschenberg. His white paintings… when I saw those, I said, 'Oh yes, I must. Otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'"; Cage's musical equivalent to the Rauschenberg paintings uses the "silence" of the piece as an aural "blank canvas" to reflect the dynamic flux of ambient sounds surrounding each performance. The music of the piece is natural sounds of the players.

[edit] Performances

The premiere of the three-movement 4′33″ was given by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, at Woodstock, New York as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. The audience saw him sit at the piano and lift the keyboard lid. Some time later, without having played any notes, he closed the lid. A while after that, again having played nothing, he lifted the lid. And after a period of time, he closed the lid again and rose from the piano. The piece had passed without a note being played, in fact without Tudor or anyone else on stage having made any deliberate sound, although he timed the lengths on a stopwatch while turning the pages of the score. Richard Kostelanetz suggests that the very fact that Tudor, a man known for championing experimental music, was the "performer", and that Cage, a man known for introducing unexpected non-musical noise into his work, was the "composer", would have led the audience to expect unexpected sounds. Anybody listening intently would have heard them: while the performer produces no deliberately musical sound, there will nonetheless be sounds in the concert hall (just as there were sounds in the anechoic chamber at Harvard). It is these sounds, unpredictable and unintentional, that are supposedly regarded as constituting the music in this piece. Among those who take it seriously, the piece remains controversial to this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music.

The length of 4′33″ is in fact not designated by its score. The instructions for the work indicate that it consists of three movements, for each of which the only instruction is "tacet," indicating silence on the part of the performer or performers. The title of the piece in each performance is determined by the length of silence chosen. Cage chose the length of the famous premiere performance by chance methods using I Ching models, and later said that it just as easily could have been any other length. There is no evidence supporting the sometimes-made claim that Cage chose the length deliberately, four minutes and thirty-three seconds being 273 seconds and absolute zero being a temperature of −273 °C.

On the 16th of January 2004, at the Barbican in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, gave the UK's first orchestral "performance" of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC3 Radio and one of the main challenges was the radio's emergency backup systems which are designed to switch on whenever silence is detected. They had to be switched off for the sole purpose of this performance[4].

[edit] Recordings

4′33″ has been "recorded" on several occasions, one version being "performed" by Frank Zappa (part of A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, on the Koch label, 1993). An "orchestral" version of 4′33″ given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in January 2004; this performance may have been simultaneously televised on BBC Four, the recording of which was made available on iFilm in 2006. A perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek version was recorded by the staff of the UK Guardian newspaper on 2004-01-16.[5] A (probably fictitious) story tells that a 7" vinyl version of 4′33″ was at one time popular on the juke boxes of a number of bars, as it gave customers a relief from an otherwise relentless soundtrack of rock and roll.

A "performance" of 4′33″ was "broadcast" on Australian radio station ABC Classic FM, as part of a program exploring "sonic responses" to Cage's work.[6]

A jazz version was "performed" at The Fast Show on BBC.

A "speeded up version" by punk band Benny was included on the Boss Tuneage compilation cd Boss Samplerage 3 which lasted only few seconds.

[edit] Other cultural references

  • The song "Two Minutes Silence" on John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions is a tribute to Cage and his composition 4′33″[citation needed]. The song is actually two minutes of silence.
  • The anarchist punk band Crass alluded to 4′33″ with their song "They've Got A Bomb", which includes a silent gap in the music. The band has acknowledged the influence of Cage, and said that the idea of the space in the song, when performed live, was to suddenly stop the energy, dancing and noise and allow the audience to momentarily "confront themselves" and consider the reality of nuclear war (a film projected onto a screen behind the band continued to show images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Unlike the original piece, this silence serves a musical purpose by contrasting with the frenetic music preceding it. One may compare this notion to a well-known saying attributed to Claude Debussy: "Music is the space between the notes". A studio recording of the song appears on their 1978 The Feeding of the 5000 LP. Early pressings of the album also feature two minutes of silence entitled "The Sound of Free Speech." The gap was left by a poem called "Asylum" that workers at the record plant refused to press.[citation needed]
  • The track "Magic Window" on Boards of Canada album Geogaddi consists of 1 minute and 46 seconds silence.
  • Ciccone Youth, the collaboration between members of Sonic Youth and Mike Watt, included a track titled "(silence)" on The Whitey Album that consists of 63 seconds of just that. Sonic Youth is also known for experimental music and have covered other pieces by John Cage on their SYR release Goodbye 20th Century.
  • In July 2002 composer Mike Batt (best known for being behind the 1970s novelty/children's act The Wombles) had charges of plagiarism filed against him by the estate of John Cage after crediting his track "A Minute's Silence" as being written by "Batt/Cage". Batt initially vowed to fight the suit, even going so far as to claim that his piece is "a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." Batt told the London Independent that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Batt eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed six figure sum in September 2002.[7]
  • Covenant closed their 2000 album United States of Mind with four minutes and 33 seconds of silence "entitled" You Can Make Your Own Music.
  • The Magnetic Fields included a version of 4′33″ on their album The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees.
  • 4Minutes33, a UK rock band, are named after the Cage piece.
  • Mental Marble, a Dutch singer/songwriter collective, has several lyrical references to Cage and 4′33″ (for ex. the name Cage Carglass in the Sixth Palette, "took a zoom at the goose and made the first sense of silence on canvas" (about Rauschenberg/Malevich and "listen to the things you see .../ the whites .../ ) and inserted 16 secs of silence after the song Egbert (on The Wild Goose Found), so that the bonus track starts at 4'33. the song UFO FARAO (on Melt) is about being aware of your sound environment.
  • Rap artist MC Paul Barman proclaims in his song 'Excuse You' from the Paullelujah album that he '…can rock the mic to "Silence" by John Cage with the arty flavor'.
  • Norwegian avant-garde/black metal band Solefald has a song off their Neonism album entitled "4.34 PM", which seems to have an indirect correlation with Cage's piece.
  • A science fiction webcomic called "four minutes and thirty-three seconds" takes its name directly from the Cage piece.
  • VNV Nation recorded the song "Schweigeminute" on their 1999 album Praise The Fallen. It is one silent minute.
  • Type O Negative's album Slow Deep and Hard includes as track called The Misinterpretation of Silence and Its Consquences, which consists of one minute and four seconds of silence.
  • Bloodhound Gang's album Hooray for Boobies contains a track called "The Ten Coolest Things About New Jersey", which consists of ten seconds of silence.
  • Ebeneezer on Fire/Terroristic Plot, a Minneapolis rap/rock/experimental band, has the lyrics "i'll have you wishing i was singing 4'33", so come on, sing with me!" on an untitled track.
  • On March 27, 2007 the webcomic Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques mentioned 4′33″ in the punchline of its 848th installment.
  • In January 2007, conceptual artist Jonathan Keats created a mobile ring tone based on 4'33".

[edit] 4′33″ No. 2

In 1962, Cage "wrote" 0′00″, which is also referred to as 4′33″ No. 2. The directions originally consisted of one sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence.

The second performance added four new qualifications to the directions: "the performer should allow any interruptions of the action, the action should fulfill an obligation to others, the same action should not be used in more than one performance, and should not be the performance of a musical composition."[3]

[edit] References & Footnotes

  1. ^ A few notes about silence and John Cage. CBC.ca (2004-11-24).
  2. ^ Cage, John (1961). Silence. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press. 
  3. ^ a b Pritchett, James (1993). The Music of John Cage, Music in the Twentieth Century (No. 5). Cambridge University Press, 59;138. ISBN 0-52-156544-8. 
  4. ^ BBC Press Office, Cage Uncaged (2007-02-21).
  5. ^ Guardian recording of 4′33″ (2004-01-16).
  6. ^ ABC Classic FM.
  7. ^ BBC News.

[edit] External links

[edit] Audio (ersatz)

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