Well, of course, you could if you lost your hearing, or were born deaf. Not that I’d recommend this as an artistic exercise.
Our church pianist played it during the service just a few weeks ago. We had some good quality silence that day. I did notice some sounds that the building makes (creaking wood) that I had never heard before.
But anyway, 4:33 is for pikers. What you want to listen to is this performance of “As Slow As Possible”.
The piece was started in 2001 and is expected to last 639 years.
There was a note change on 5 May 2006
and another chord change will happen on 5 July 2008. If you’re in Germany around that time, stop here
http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/new/index.php?seite=ortundzeit&l=e
to listen to it!
I would submit that it could be considered a form of “found art”, as well as performance. By that, I mean that the artists (both Cage and the particular performers) are attempting to provide a framework around something that occurs naturally–to lead the audience to listen from a particular perspective.
Since the work is certainly intended to evoke a particular emotional state (although a rather abstruse, reflective one), I am compelled by my own definitions to classify it as art. I won’t venture to say that it’s good art, but it’s clever in its way, and it has undeniably been successful art with at least some listeners.
So, not garbage, really. I can’t call it genius, either, though. Yes, it has a point, an idea to get across…but that idea strikes me, personally, as rather trite and obvious.
20/20 hindsight and all that. That Cage needed to actually write a piece of music to demonstrate concepts such as using existing sound within a performance framework, and the role of absence of deliberate sound in musical composition, shows that these were not concepts easily explained in abstract ways. Or rather, that this shows his pedagogical side, and that the best way to explain these fairly philosophical arguments was through demonstration. (Maybe the appropriate challenge to anybody who says 4’33" “isn’t a musical composition” is to write a musical composition which demonstrates their point? 
)
Coincidentally, I caught a bit of what seemed to be an interesting radio programme about Cage yesterday - available to listen to for 7 (now 6) days: BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives (I’m listening to the whole thing now to see if it actually is 
)
Hindsight? While I would have had some difficulty articulating them at the time, I was aware of and thought about these ideas long before I ever heard of Cage, from the earliest stages of my musical practice. Maybe it’s just me.
I fail to see any difference at all between sculpture and music, here. If the entire object consists of absence, it ceases to exist, in either case.
No, that Cage needed to “write” 4’33" just shows that he couldn’t explain these things. Most of us understood them already.
I’ll give it this: It’s a brilliant prank. That people still take it seriously only makes it more brilliant.
The map is not the territory, the explanation is not the subject. You can read all the books that exist on violin technique, study acoustics, music history, etc. but that doesn’t make you a violinist. Practice does. Experience does. An explanation is not a substitute for first hand experience. Remember that Cage was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism. There is nothing to understand, rather, everything is to be experienced.
Did you ever, genuinely, listen to 4’33"? No need to get yourself to a concert hall, you could try playing it yourself, it’s pretty easy. 
Again, from Silence:
The word “genius” implies the traditional view of the artist as a sort of god. It is the romantic ideal of the composer/sculptor/painter as a fountain of creation, one step only removed from God himself. Although this is a relatively recent notion, it is very deeply rooted in our culture. We value originality, effort and skill.
What made Cage’s work important and relevent is that he completely rejects this vision. He used silence and chance operations to remove himself from composition. His message was that “this is music because you chose to listen to it as music”. Like I wrote above, this is not an intellectual point to be understood. You really have to go out and listen to everything and anything with all your mind and heart, as though a composer had created it.
Anyone who has participated in a “moment of silence” has experienced this “piece”; there is always shuffling, rustling, coughing, breathing, and other miscellaneous noises occuring during such a period. And the longer that “moment” goes on, the more you notice those noises, if for no other reason than because your mind begins to wander. As such, all Cage did was arrange a four-and-a-half minute “moment of silence” in a concert hall, and called it “music”. Whether the listener focuses on those ambient noises is entirely at the whim of that listener; Cage has nothing to do with that experience.
In fact, the conductor could impose a 4’33" “moment of silence” during a performance and owe John Cage absolutely nothing (by which, I mean “in terms of artistic influence”). Say it’s for the troops in Iraq or something. The effect is, of course, exactly the same. The only brilliance involved is that Cage is actually able to get people to call it a “performance”.
Not quite. During that moment of silence, were you listening to the sounds as though they were music? That’s the point. A moment of silence is a great opportunity to do so but I doubt most people participating in them actively search for music there.
You are right about one thing and that is that Cage has nothing to do with the experience. That is what I meant when I wrote that he rejected the traditional view of the composer. The listener is making the experience musical through his or her approach to listening. There is no genius intented on the part of Cage, but that certainly doesn’t mean there is nothing to be gained from from listening.
Homework assignment for those participating in this thread:
Set a stop watch for 4:33. Then sit down, for that whole time, and pretend what you’re hearing is the new Radiohead (or whatever you think of as more “genius” than John Cage). A good way to prepare for this would be to read the Cage quote Jovan provided that describes Cage’s experience of listening to this piece. Don’t just notice the air conditioning. Notice the theme the air conditioning introduces. Feel the tension build. Feel relief when it is broken when the refrigerator starts humming.
Seriously, try it. It’s neat.
ETA: do NOT give up before time is up. Cage’s point isn’t just some cheesy “everything is music, even the noise of street traffic.” He’s asking how we would feel if we approached everyday noise with all the assumptions we bring to a classically composed piece.
If by ‘during a performance’ you mean in between items on a programme, then he would only owe Cage no artistic debt if he was entirely unaware that Cage was the first to encapsulate the concept so explicitly. While I know there’s plenty of ignorant conductors out there, there’s few who don’t know about 4’33". If by during a piece, he would be disrupting another composer’s composition. Of course, there are composers who make use of large sections of silence - I can think of one piece where the indicated durations of various pauses total up to around a minute. No composer would do this thinking ‘hey, lets get them to listen to nothing, what a neat and original idea’. But they do it. Why?
The effect would be entirely and completely different if it was to be given a purpose or function. ‘For the troops’? Sounds suspiciously like a two-minute silence to me, and that’s about deliberately evoking specific emotions. 4’33" (don’t we tend to bold the titles of pieces music here? ) does not use simplistic associatiation triggers in this way, and nor does a Bach fugue or Beethoven quartet. It is a similarly abstract work. Try shimmery’s suggestion.
If a sculture does not exist, one does not look at it, one walks straight past it.
If a musical composition does not exist, one does not listen to it, one moves on to the next piece.
Oh, but he went into these concepts in great detail in essays and in lectures. Go and listen to the radio programme I linked to, and you’ll see how much he wanted to talk about his ideas. However, if it wasn’t for 4’33", we wouldn’t be talking about him here, would we?
I just remembered a piece by artist James Turell on display at the 1st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. It’s essentially just a big hole in the ceiling, but it’s cleverly designed so that the sky looks pasted, or “painted” onto the ceiling. Here is a Japanese blog with very good pictures of the work.
I’m quite aware that listening deeply to “silence” is neat. I’ve been aware of that for longer than I can remember, and certainly longer than I’d ever heard of John Cage or his “compositions”. I do so nearly every night, in fact, and many mornings, and often in the middle of the day when I ought to be doing other things. What difference does it make if some pretentious hack comes along and slaps a label on it? The problem isn’t the silence; the problem is in trying to claim the silence is something it’s not.
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Stop saying that 4’33" simply consists of silence. It doesn’t, for various reasons already given.
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Cage was a ‘pretentious hack’? Could you please elaborate on that?
This thread is really frustrating. Music is probably the only thing in the world that people very little about something start acting like they wrote a thesis on it. It takes some balls…
For the second time, for everyone who comes in and talks about how Cage tried to copyright silence. The piece isn’t about just sitting for 4’33" in silence and that being a composed piece of music. He didn’t champion himself as being the laziest composer in existance, or anything like that. It’s also not some great joke on the audience.
The piece would be better looked at as a catalyst to get the average joe listening to the sounds of life, the sounds that surround us every second and looking for some beauty in them. all the sounds around us interact with each other resulting in a great symphony, chamber piece, cocaphony of sound. We should not just simply judging them as noise or music, sounds that are just existing and sounds that are in existence just for our listening “pleasure”, but instead to appreciate all of them them same way, giving each equal weight. no good or bad sounds. just sounds. Which to Cage, and many others is music.
The point he was trying to express was that we have no need to worry that some day well will run out of music, because music through these sounds surrounds us every day, when we decide to pay attention to it. (of course some people here have been doing this there whole life, and would never need a fool like Cage to throw it in their face :rolleyes: ) I wish i had such discipline daily…
I for one, Appreciate the little reminder that 4’33" gives us, that music is there for us all the time if we just listen and appreciate it. so to me its Genius.
Simple. A hack is an artist whose work takes no skill to create, and it takes no skill at all to “create” things like 273 seconds of rest. And trying to claim deep, enduring meaning where there’s nothing at all is on the face of it pretentious.
please…
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here… are you familiar with Cage’s other works? Or at least the existence of Cage’s other works? 4’33" is just one work in a long lifetime of composition. A lifetime of composition that integrated many and various fascinating ideas and influences. We’ve already discussed a number of those ideas here.
Eh, I quit. percussion, jovan, GorillaMan… you guys can take it from here…