What intrigues me about this discussion is the assumption that a piece like 4’33" has an intellectual point to “get” and once you “get” that point there’s no reason to listen to it.
It’s like saying “Oh, I read the Cliff Notes to Great Expectations. I know what it’s about. So why bother reading it?”
The point of a performance of 4’33" is to have a structured listening experience that’s directed toward the “ground” rather the “figure”. We listen differently when we’re in a concert setting. We pay attention in different ways. And normally we pay attention to the music that’s in the foreground. The silence in the background exists as something for the music to play off of. 4’33" is an opportunity to attend to the texture of that normally inaudible background. And understanding that intellectually is not the same as actually doing it, just like understanding the theory behind how to swing a baseball bat is not the same as hitting a line drive.
And whence the hate? What has 4’33" ever done to you? And if some people occasionally want to hear of a performance of something you don’t like, why do you care?
If it were not for the hate, the thread would not be in The Pit, and thereby would be one step closer to being relegated to history, rather than being kept alive and actively forming part of our ongoing culture, due to the performance art which is the SDMB’s Pit.
When I go to to a concert I enjoy the way the different players interact and come together to form a cohesive unit with the conductor, the venue and perhaps with the audience itself. This is done through many years of dedicated individual hard work, then many weeks of rehearsal. This piece, on the other hand, could have been performed with a room full of properly dressed stand-ins with five minutes of instruction on how to hold a musical instrument and an actor in a tux with instructions on otherwise blank pieces of paper saying what facial expressions to make at what time. A person attending the event from out of town that didn’t have personal knowledge of the local orchestral scene wouldn’t have known the difference…and would probably be talking with friends about frame and texture and ambiance etc. This isn’t “hate”-this is just disappointment that real talent was wasted on such a piece, and that anyone dressed the same would have got the same applause.
Batt’s attorney demanding to know exactly which 60 seconds had been plagiarized;
Batt, after the dust had settled, composing and copyrighting his own piece of silence, four minutes and thirty four seconds in length and titled (obviously) “4’34”, and promising to sue for any performances of 4’33 that went overtime.
None of which is any less preposterous than what actually did happen.
Yup. My puny widdle brain can’t comprehend true genius. There is no such thing as pretentiousness in art - only Philistines who are incapable of recognizing greatness.
That’s probably the best negative criticism of the piece I’ve heard, mostly because it actually engages with the flaws of the piece as music. I don’t agree that your criticism makes 4’33’’ worthless or bad, after all, if nothing else it’s lead to your reflection on what you want from music and enjoy about it, but that’s an extremely metatextual way to say it’s worthwhile.
Anyone who says
is aptly described as a philistine, and their opinions on art are worthless.
Which doesn’t mean there’s no pretention in art (not that pretentious art is necessarily bad), but it’s clear that you are at best unwilling to consider that there’s genius in some avant-garde art, and have confused whether you enjoy something with whether it’s worthwhile.
Which doesn’t mean there’s no pretention in art (not that pretentious art is necessarily bad), but it’s clear that you are at best unwilling to consider that there’s genius in some self-professed avant-garde art, and have confused whether you enjoy something with whether it’s worthwhile.
Believe it or not, Cage wrote a sequel to 4’33" called 0’0", whose score was once sentence long: “In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action.” The first performance consisted of Cage writing that sentence.
What is so hard about “Hey, it’s not really my thing, but whatever floats your boat.” Nobody is criticizing you for not liking a avant guard art. People are criticizing you for attaching some bizarre moral superiority to not liking a mid-century stunt.
Who put you in charge of deciding what’s bullshit and what’s not? I’ll like what I want to like, thank you very much, regardless of what some self-proclaimed guardian of culture says is good.