Well, you seem to have understood the question, at least. Unfortunately, the idea that “music has a fairly precise definition with elements that are universally agreed upon” is pretty much bullshit. What constitutes music is far from a settled question.
Here’s the thing: you don’t have to consider it music. There’s nothing wrong with not considering it music. Different people understand music in different contexts.
The difference here is that I’m not accusing people who disagree with me of pretension.
I don’t know that the question’s that unsettled - there might be discussions on whether or not certain sounds are musical, but the lack of any audio/melodic/rhythmic element is pretty much the antithesis of music, and I doubt you’d find any music professors who’d disagree unless they were high or lost up their own ass. Hell, you can call a blank canvas a painting, if you want, but I don’t know why you’d be surprised if people assumed you were being pretentious if you did. It comes off as “I’m appreciating it on a level you don’t get”, when “it” is the complete lack of everything that’s considered to make up the form. Like I said, I can buy it as an idea about music or an artistic statement, but calling it actual “music” does make you sound like you’re trying to appear clever if you’re offering no explanation as to why you consider it such.
You’re reading things into it (pretense, attempts to seem clever, some perception of social distinction conferred by a different idea of how to label something) that aren’t there. In the scheme of things, it’s a “you say tomato, I say tomahto” situation - personally, I’m willing to regard recordings of hour-long sine waves, no-input mixing boards and Yoko Ono’s caterwauling as music, so why not the pleasant ambient rustling that usually ensues in a 4’33" performance?
You’ve poisoned the well with the “high or lost up their own ass” but the fact is, if you meant to say that most music professors would say 4’33’’ isn’t music, you’d be wrong.
The main point, though, is that the null set is qualitatively different from anything Cage has ever done, in that it is both pragmatically useful and interesting outside of the context Cage’s works come from.
I disagree that there is a lack of any audio/melodic/rhythmic element.
First, as has been pointed out over and over (and over), the point of 4’33" isn’t really the silence; it is the ambient noise that one becomes inevitably aware of as a result of that silence. I would not normally consider random ambient noise musical, but 4’33" reframes that noise within a musical context, and causes us to listen to it in a way we would not normally do. As such, it strikes me as a valid, if esoteric, example of Organized Sound. “Found aleatory”, if you will. Further, I would consider a rest an element of rhythm, and silence an element of melody (and rhythm). It’s the musical equivalent of negative space.
Note, like others, I’m not claiming it’s a good piece of music. I think it’s interesting, but I don’t spend my time listening to it, nor talking about it outside of occasional message board spats.
As for your ridiculous assertion (with built in No True Scotsmen) that music professors would limit themselves in their assessment of music, Frylock already covered that. So I’ll leave it with this:
Word.
fachverwirrt
Applied Music Faculty, Washington University, St. Louis.
Rest is indeed an element of rhythm, and silence can be an element of melody - when used in conjunction with actual rhythm and melody. Without them, it just becomes their absence. If I got on stage behind a drum set and said I was going to play a beat and just sat there, and then told you the rhythm was the beat of your own heart, you’d think I was some hippie who was full of shit (unless you happened to be a hippie who was full of shit). To use painting as an example again: empty canvas can be used to effect in a painting, but that doesn’t make a blank canvas a painting, no matter how much theory is behind it.
As far as reframing ambient noise within a musical context, I suppose some music professors might buy into that, but to me it’s still more a New Age-y concept than an actual piece of music. Still, knowing a few music professors, it shouldn’t surprise me to hear some consider it music. Shouldn’t have made a claim for all of them. I don’t see how it works as organized sound, though, unless just merely by saying “Starting…now!” is somehow organizing it. Hey, I just farted! Lump me in with the American Primitives!
Actually it’s to force the students to see the piece for what it really is. What these particular smartasses were doing was seeing it as an excuse to do nothing. What they’re supposed to do is perform, albeit in an unconventional way. The timing point is actually incidental (and it’s worth noting that the piece is in three movements with differing time lengths, not just one block of silence). The work is supposed to be a demonstration of ambient noise demarcated by duration, and the assessment is supposed to be a measure of the student’s ability not just to read what’s on the paper but to present and interpret the work. If you think teachers can’t tell the difference between someone goofing off and someone attempting to convey the composer’s intent, you’re clearly not a teacher.
That’s because you’re discussing the piece almost sixty years after it was written. For its time it was shockingly radical and forced audiences to rethink what they hear around them and how they think of music. Six decades on we’ve grasped the idea and moved on. It’s New Age-y now because the ideas that people like Cage (and Riley and Glass and others) were experimenting with in the 1950s have gone from shocking to conventional and in some instances to mass-marketed glurge.
I remember the first time I saw a painting by Alexander Calder - a few circles and lines, artfully arranged - and said to my mother “I could have done that.” And she said “Yes - but you didn’t. He did.” Sometimes it takes a genius to make a simple point. So for those of you who are wondering what the big deal is because you can sit and listen to ambient noise anywhere at any time - congratulations, Cage has made his point.
I won’t pretend that I listen to 4’33" over and over (or indeed that I want to experience it more than once) but it’s certainly music. The visual equivalent is not a blank canvas but rather putting a picture frame around a window. Yes it’s still a window, but if it gets you think about what art is and whether just seeing (or hearing) what’s already there is art then it makes its point. And, ideally, once you’ve seen it you will continue to see it once you leave the art gallery or concert hall.
And I have a degree in music history, if anyone cares.
It’s my understanding that museum curators were behind the Moon landing hoax and 9/11. It’s all a big conspiracy.
After all, art is all about the big bucks. There are few people in the world richer than museum curators and classical music composers. I hear that Bill Gates is working on a one-note symphony so that he can finally con us all and make his “big score.”
Good thing that “smart” people can see through all of the bullshit.
If I fucking wanted to listen to ambient sounds, I get a damned white-noise machine. It’s sheer stupidity. If he’d merely kept it down to a minute or so, it would have been a tolerable quiet moment between peices - hardly unusual. Only a complete buffoon would somehow fail to notice that people listen to ambient sounds all the damn day, and ignore them for a reason.
If I ever get the chance, I’m challenging that sonufabitch to a steel cage match for offenses against human intelligence. I don’t really give a shit about what he calls art, or what anybody calls art. His mere existence insults the very concept of a human brain.
But pretentious he and the piece remain, because he’s pretending to even be making a simple point. I don’t care what shuffling sounds people make. I hear them all the time. I don’t need some overpaid hack to tell me about them at length.
And here’s the problem with most of this art - a problem that the sterile “it’s art/no it isn’t” debate tends to mask - and that is, art or not, the point was made long ago and repetition does not improve upon it.
Whether “art” or not, it is old news. The sad fact it is old news that keeps being recycled. It is the equivalent of the 19th century “academy” art that guys like the impressionists were rebelling against.
For art that relies on its shock value, on its originality, this is deadly. Being forced to pay homage to dead art making a point repeatedly made already is stultifying.
The question is: why cannot art move on? Of course some artists do, and have, but the “high art” appears to have fossilized currently - on which can be blamed the increasing academization of art, which is now more a product of celebrity-struck academic study than intuitive appreciation. Remove the name from the work and no-one cares about it - it is thus the name, rather than the work, which is the true focus of ‘art appreciation’.
It is similar to the concept in Zen of students earnestly going through the rigamarole of Zen practice without grasping enlightenment. Much of modern art aspires to be in effect koans in visual or aural media - but koans where everyone already knows the purpose - and thus useless for actually attaining enlightenment, as they cannot shock the mind out of complacency.
This isn’t some unique new thing, a similar stultification in art ableit for very different reasons was experienced in the 19th century. With this difference: the 19th century academic artists had at least the skill to paint pretty pictures.
