This sounds so much like the avant garde art threads we’ve had lately. But even less populated. . .
Oh, my vote goes for “genius.”
I love the Weird Al version.
What do you mean, “it”? 4’33" just plain doesn’t exist. There’s no question about whether it’s a work of art, because it isn’t even a work. Even if you buy into the thing about how the experience of 4’33" is all about the ambient sounds, then what you’re left with is Cage trying to claim credit for every sound in the world that he didn’t produce. People listened to ambient sounds long before Cage ever tried to claim that he produced a “work” of them.
I wish I could find a link to the story I originally heard. As I mentioned in the OP, there was a comment about how our lives are saturated by “media-ized music” (my term).
Whether by iPod, MTV, Led Zep on a car commercial, or themes songs from The Simpsons/Sopranos, we’re bombarded by pre-formed, packaged bits of music. I can’t claim that Cage was prescient, but today, “his” silence says something about our corporate-driven aural environment.
But it isn’t “his” silence. It’s just nothing. Any point gleaned from it, whether it’s an appreciation for other sounds around us or a new understanding of normal music is entirely a result of our own minds and situations, not through motivation or the power from his piece. I can have silence any time I want.
You can get the same experience by going into the woods, a city park, a bookstore, or any of myriad of other environments, maybe closing your eyes, and listening. What’s the point?
I don’t follow you. Of course it exists as a work - it’s four and a half minutes (or thereabouts) of musical pauses. When you turn off the television, nobody’s saying that what you’re hearing is 4’33" - but if you’re at a concert and the piece is being played, with a pianist (usually) performing it, then those ambient/incidental sounds are part of the piece.
But those ambient/incidental sounds are not the same at each performance. And possibly more importantly, they’re not due to Cage.
If only it were the only piece of music permitted on American Idol.
The disk jockey performed it the last night of WNIB, before it changed from classical to WDRV and classic rock. He lft his mike on so you could hear him fielding calls saying, “No, this is not dead air. It is the piece.”
For my money it is a brilliant composition that is never the same. Serious modern music is nothing if it isn’t self-aware, but what is more self-aware than 4:33? After it, all one can say of another self-aware piece is a dismissive, “It’s been done.”
Actually, you can. Cage’s first thought was to sell it to Muzak, the original “corporate-driven aural environment.” As he did little that wasn’t snarky, it’s safe to say he had no expectation they’d buy it, just the vain hope somebody would “get it.”
I, myself, realize its brilliance but find it unlistenable because I listen to music to drown out, not give a forum for, the voices in my head.
I agree with your first sentence, although I think that’s also (part of) the point.
But I disagree with your second sentence. If a piece of music (or, if you prefer, a performance) is designed to make people hear the incidental sounds around them, and the audience inside that concert hall (for example) does have that experience, then the composer has been successful. I also think that 4’33" is making a statement about the importance of silence to music, which is not always apparent unless you stop to think about it.
But I don’t need 4’33’’ to hear those sounds. Listening to whatever-song gives me an experience I can only have from that song, but anything 4’33’ motivates in me I can get from elsewhere.
The motivation that comes from it isn’t due to Cage’s work. Imagine if while listening to it I see a picture on the wall - is whatever I feel from that down to the artist? Or to Cage? Likewise, if I hear someone whistling in the street outside, that’s not from Cage. Effectively it’s claiming the work of others as his own (if that is his point). And I would say silence is important in music, but only in relation to the non-silent parts of the music.
I think some of you guys are mistakenly assuming that Cage was trying to lay claim to silence, when that’s not the case at all. 4’33" is more about the philosophy than a tangible piece of music (or non-music).
Revanant Threshold, point taken, and we’re just going to have to agree to disagree 
Yeah, the point is not just to force you to take 4 minutes and 33 seconds to listen to the world around you. That would be kind of silly and gimmicky. The point is to get you to hear those sounds in the same context that you would listen to a “composed” piece of music. It gets especially interesting if you listen to it in the framework of “piece composed by John Cage,” because many of his other works are based on philosophical ideas that I personally find pretty cool.
An example is the idea of “accepting each sound for what it is and moving on from it” - I don’t know if this is what percussion was referring to exactly, but Cage was interested in the idea that each sound could simultaneously exist as though it was alone in the universe, or could be perceived in infinite combinations with the other sounds around it. Think of three notes played in sequence - you could hear three single notes, a triplet, or two notes and then one more. He referred to this duality as “unimpededness/interpenetration”. I don’t know much about Buddhism, but I understand that he drew this idea from Buddhist philosophy. In my opinion, it’s pretty neat to listen to the world through that filter for a short time.
Also, to address the idea that Cage is trying to “claim silence as his own,” he actually left significant room for improvisation on the part of the players in many of his works. The scores for a lot of his pieces consist of cryptic drawings, symbols, etc., that the players are supposed to interpret as best as they can (with sincerity and forethought, since these pieces sound like crap if the players improvise on the spot). Contrary to trying to claim the sounds produced by others (or the world) as his “own sounds,” Cage tried to make many of his pieces a more collaborative compositional effort, a framework that other artists could challenge.
I once took a whole class about John Cage, can you tell?
What?
I mean, what, honestly, are you expressing when you express nothing? What’s the meaning of a blank canvas, or saying “that space over there where there isn’t anything but air is a statue I’ve made”?
Now, I’m not saying that a “performance” of 4’33" doesn’t make a point, because I agree that it does, if it’s in the correct context. It’s still gimmicky, but gimmicks can make a point. However, it’s not a genuine musical composition. dropzone calls it a “brilliant composition” but it is, by definition, not a composition. A composition is composed of things, not nothing.
It’s… well, a form of performance art, I suppose.
Paris Hilton is still doing things; Cage’s piece is nearly 60 years old. I doubt we’d be talking about Paris Hilton in 60 years.
If it’s trash, then it would have been forgotten. The fact that people are not only aware of it after 60 years, but also have strong opinions as to its value, proves that it has lasted – the primary definition of any work of art.
And the fact that someone can create a bit of music that is still argued about forcefully after 60 years, is a definite sign of genius.
I have it on my iPod. It’s great for making train journeys quieter.
Im glad someone else read my post before hoohawing about how cage is an asshole for stealing silence
Likewise!