4′33″

4′33″ (pronounced "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds" or just "Four thirty-three"[1]) is a three-movement composition[2][3] by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements. The piece purports to consist of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed,[4] although it is commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence".[5][6] The title of the piece refers to the total length in minutes and seconds of a given performance, 4′33″ being the total length of the first public performance.[7]

Conceived around 1947–48, while the composer was working on Sonatas and Interludes,[2] 4′33″ became for Cage the epitome of his idea that any sounds may constitute music.[8] It was also a reflection of the influence of Zen Buddhism, which Cage studied since the late 1940s. In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work.[9] The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes 4′33″ as Cage's "most famous and controversial creation".[2]

History of composition

Background and influences

Silence played a major role in several of Cage's works composed before 4′33″. The Duet for Two Flutes (1934), composed when Cage was 22, opens with silence, and silence was an important structural element in some of the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48), Music of Changes (1951) and Two Pastorales (1951). The Concerto for prepared piano and orchestra (1951) closes with an extended silence, and Waiting (1952), a piano piece composed just a few months before 4′33″, consists of long silences framing a single, short ostinato pattern. Furthermore, in his songs The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942) and A Flower (1950) Cage directs the pianist to play a closed instrument, which may be understood as a metaphor of silence.[10]

The first time Cage mentioned the idea of a piece composed entirely of silence was during a 1947 (or 1948) lecture at Vassar College, A Composer's Confessions. Cage told the audience that he had "several new desires", one of which was

to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be three or four-and-a-half minutes long—those 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 and fragrance of a flower. The ending will approach imperceptibility.[11]

At the time, however, Cage felt that such a piece would be "incomprehensible in the Western context," and was reluctant to write it down: "I didn't wish it to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it."[12] Painter Alfred Leslie recalls Cage presenting a "one-minute-of-silence talk" in front of a window during the late 1940s, while visiting Studio 35 at New York University.[13]

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 absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than reflecting them as echoes. Such a chamber is 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."[14] 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."[15] The realization as he saw it of the impossibility of silence led to the composition of 4′33″.

Another cited influence[12] 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'."[16] In an introduction to an article called On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Works, John Cage writes "To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later."[17]

Precursors
Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man
Alphonse Allais' Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man (1897), an earlier musical work consisting entirely of rests.
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Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:

The musicologist Richard Taruskin has argued that 4′33″ is an example of automatism. Since the Romantic Era composers have been striving to produce music that could be separated from any social connections, transcending the boundaries of time and space. In automatism, composers wish to completely remove both the composers and the artist from the process of creation. This is motivated by the belief that what we think of as "self-expression" is really just an infusion of the art with the social standards that we have been subjected to since birth. Therefore, the only way to achieve truth is to remove the artist from the process of creation. Cage achieves that by employing chance (e.g., use of the I Ching, or tossing coins) to make compositional decisions. In 4′33″, neither artist nor composer has any impact on the piece, so that Cage has no way of controlling what ambient sounds will be heard by the audience.[25]

Premiere and reception

They missed the point. There's no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.
— John Cage speaking about the premiere of 4′33″[9]

The premiere of the three-movement 4′33″ was given by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, in Woodstock, New York, as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. The audience saw him sit at the piano and, to mark the beginning of the piece, close the keyboard lid. Some time later he opened it briefly, to mark the end of the first movement. This process was repeated for the second and third movements.[26]

The piece remains controversial to this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music.

In defining noise music and its value, Paul Hegarty in Noise/Music: A History (2007) contends that Cage's 4′33″ represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, noise music, as with 4′33″, is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music.[27]

4′33″ challenges, or rather exploits to a radical extent, the social regiments of the modern concert life etiquette, experimenting on unsuspecting concert-goers to prove an important point. First, the choice of a prestigious venue and the social status of the composer and the performers automatically heightens audience's expectations for the piece. As a result, the listener is more focused, giving Cage's 4′33″ the same amount of attention (or perhaps even more) as if it were Beethoven's Ninth.[28] Thus, even before the performance, the reception of the work is already predetermined by the social setup of the concert. Furthermore, the audience's behavior is limited by the rules and regulation of the concert hall; they will quietly sit and listen to 4′33” of ambient noise. It is not easy to get a large group of people to listen to ambient noise for nearly five minutes, unless they are regulated by the concert hall etiquette.

The second point made by 4′33″ concerns duration. According to Cage, duration is the essential building block of all of music. This distinction is motivated by the fact that duration is the only element shared by both silence and sound. As a result, the underlying structure of any musical piece consists of an organized sequence of "time buckets".[29] They could be filled with either sounds, silence or noise; where neither of these elements is absolutely necessary for completeness. In the spirit of his teacher Schoenberg, Cage managed to emancipate the silence and the noise to make it an acceptable or perhaps even integral part of his music composition. 4′33″ serves as a radical and extreme illustration of this concept, asking that if the time buckets are the only necessary parts of the musical composition, then what stops the composer from filling them with no intentional sounds?

The third point is that the work of music is defined not only by its content but also by the behavior it elicits from the audience.[28] In the case of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, this would consist of widespread dissatisfaction leading up to violent riots. In Cage's 4′33″, the audience felt cheated by having to listen to no composed sounds from the performer. Nevertheless, in 4′33″ the audience contributed the bulk of the musical material of the piece. Since the piece consists of exclusively ambient noise, the audience's behavior, their whispers and movements, are essential elements that fill the above-mentioned time buckets.

In a 2013 TED Talk, philosophy professor Julian Dodd argues that 4′33″ is witty conceptual art, but does not meet the criteria for it to count as music, instead challenging the listener to question what the nature of music is.[30] In a 2013 TED Talk, psychologist Paul Bloom puts forward 4′33″ as one example to show that knowing about the origin of something influences our opinion about it as "[...] that silence is different from other forms of silence [...]".[31]

Versions of the score

Several versions of the score exist:[32] There are four known later versions, one of which is in the New York Public Library.[33]

Additionally, a facsimile, reduced in size, of the Kremen manuscript, appeared in July 1967 in Source 1, no. 2:46–54; the First Tacet Edition is described in Nyman 1974, 3, but it is not reproduced in that book.

There is some discrepancy between the lengths of individual movements of the premiere performance, specified in different versions of the score. The Woodstock printed program specifies the lengths 30″, 2′23″ and 1′40″, as does the Kremen manuscript, and presumably the original manuscript had the same indications. However, in the First Tacet Edition Cage writes that at the premiere the timings were 33″, 2′40″ and 1′20″. In the Second Tacet Edition he adds that after the premier a copy has been made for Irwin Kremen, in which the timelengths of the movements were 30″, 2′23″ and 1′40″. The causes of this discrepancy are not currently understood, the original manuscript being still lost.[1]

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." At the first performance Cage had to 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."[11]

One3

In late 1989, three years before his death, Cage revisited the idea of 4′33″ one last time. He composed One3, the full title of which is One3 = 4′33″ (0′00″) + . As in all number pieces, "One" refers to the number of performers required. The score instructs the performer to build a sound system in the concert hall, so that "the whole hall is on the edge of feedback, without actually feeding back." The content of the piece is the electronically amplified sound of the hall and the audience.

Performances and recordings

4′33″ has been recorded on several occasions: Frank Zappa recorded it as part of A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, on the Koch label, 1993; in 2002, James Tenney performed 4′33″ at Rudolf Schindler's historic Kings Road House in celebration of the work's 50th anniversary.[35]

Several performances of 4′33″ including a "techno remix" by New Waver were broadcast on Australian radio station ABC Classic FM, as part of a program exploring "sonic responses" to Cage's work.[36][37] The Swedish electronic band Covenant concluded their 2000 album United States of Mind with a rendition of 4′33″ entitled "You Can Make Your Own Music".[38]

On January 16, 2004, at the Barbican Centre in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the UK's first orchestral performance of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and one of the main challenges was that the station's emergency backup systems are designed to switch on and play music whenever apparent silence (dead air) lasting longer than a preset duration is detected. They had to be switched off for this performance.[39]

A tongue-in-cheek version was recorded by the staff of the UK Guardian newspaper on January 16, 2004.[40]

In 2004, the work was voted to be number 40 in the ABC radio's Classic 100 piano countdown.

On December 5, 2010, an international simultaneous performance of Cage's 4′33″ took place involving over 200 performers, amateur and professional musicians, and artists. The global orchestra, conducted live by Bob Dickinson, former member of post-punk group Magazine, via video link, performed the piece in support of the Cage Against The Machine campaign to bring 4′33″ to Christmas number 1 in 2010. A second performance took place on December 12, 2010.[41]

On November 17, 2015, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert uploaded a video of this piece being performed by a cat, showing that its performer isn't required to be human.[42]

2010 UK Christmas Number One campaign

In 2010 a group was set up on the social networking website Facebook that encouraged people in the UK to buy a new rendition of 4′33″ in the week leading up to Christmas 2010,[43] in the hope that it would prevent the winner of the seventh series of The X Factor topping the UK Singles Chart and achieving the Christmas number one.[44] The group was inspired by an earlier campaign in which a Facebook group set up by Jon and Tracey Morter prompted people to buy "Killing in the Name" by American rap metal protest group Rage Against the Machine in the week before Christmas 2009,[45] and has therefore been dubbed "Cage Against the Machine".[46][47] The creators of the Facebook group hoped that reaching number one would help to promote the piece and "make December 25 'a silent night'."[48] At its peak on December 14, 2010, the Facebook group had more than 85,000 members.[49]

The campaign received support from several celebrities. It first came into prominence after it was mentioned by British science writer Ben Goldacre on his Twitter profile.[50] Within two weeks, British newspaper The Sun reported that the Facebook group had been backed by more than 3,000 members.[51] One of several similar campaigns, the Facebook group was called "the only effort this year with a hope of [reaching Number One]" by The Guardian journalist Tom Ewing in September.[52] XFM DJ Eddy Temple-Morris also voiced his support on his blog,[53] as did Luke Bainbridge.[54] This version of Cage's work failed to make number 1, but charted at number 21 on the UK Singles Chart.[55]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Solomon 1998/2002.
  2. 1 2 3 Pritchett, Kuhn, Grove.
  3. ↑ Kostelanetz 2003, 69–71, 86, 105, 198, 218, 231.
  4. ↑ Kostelanetz 2003, 69–70.
  5. ↑ Fetterman 1996, 69.
  6. ↑ Lienhard 2003, 254.
  7. ↑ Published score, Edition Peters 6777.
  8. ↑ Gutmann, Peter (1999). "John Cage and the Avant-Garde: The Sounds of Silence". Retrieved April 4, 2007.
  9. 1 2 Kostelanetz 2003, 70.
  10. ↑ Revill 1993, 162.
  11. 1 2 Pritchett 1993, 59, 138.
  12. 1 2 Revill 1993, 164.
  13. ↑ Stein, Judith (2009). "Interview: Alfred Leslie". Art in America (January 2009): 92.
  14. ↑ "A few notes about silence and John Cage". CBC.ca. November 24, 2004. Archived from the original on February 12, 2006.
  15. ↑ Cage 1961, 8.
  16. ↑ Kostelanetz 2003, 71.
  17. ↑ Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1961. Print.
  18. ↑ Allais, Alphonse. 1897. Album primo-avrilesque, p. 23-26. Available online.
  19. ↑ Dickinson 1991.
  20. ↑ Leroux, Gaston. 1903. La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet. Available online.
  21. ↑ Bek, Grove.
  22. ↑ Carpenter, Humphrey. 1990. The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends, 153. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-44142-8
  23. ↑ "New Jazz: 'All or Nothing at All'" (March 16, 1947) The Washington Post. p. S7.
  24. ↑ See sources and recordings at the Yves Klein article.
  25. ↑ Taruskin 2009, 55.
  26. ↑ The actions of Tudor in the first performance are often misdescribed so that the lid is explained as being open during the movements. Cage's handwritten score (produced after the first performance) states that the lid was closed during the movements, and opened to mark the spaces between.
  27. ↑ Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music: A History (2007) Continuum International Publishing Group
  28. 1 2 Taruskin 2009, 71.
  29. ↑ Taruskin 2009, 56.
  30. ↑ "Is John Cage's 4'33 music?: Prof. Julian Dodd at TEDxUniversityOfManchester". YouTube. June 8, 2013.
  31. ↑ Paul Bloom. "Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure - Talk Video - TED.com". ted.com.
  32. ↑ This paragraph summarizes some of the findings from Solomon 1998/2002.
  33. 1 2 Carol Vogel (November 15, 2012), A Moment of Silence at MoMA The New York Times.
  34. ↑ Fetterman 1996, 76–78.
  35. ↑ Tenney's recording is archived on line via The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS)
  36. ↑ "ABC Classic FM music details for 11 July 2001".
  37. ↑ Kouvaras, Linda (2013). Loading the Silence: Australian Sound Art in the Post-Digital Age. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 9781409441564.
  38. ↑ Reed, Alexander S. (2013). Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780199339624. Industrial trio Covenant conclude their 2000 album United States of Mind with four minutes and thirty-three soundless seconds (on a track called "You Can Make Your Own Music"), nodding slyly to composer John Cage, whose silent 4’33” of 1952 may be the ultimate open question of what constitutes music; but the other ten songs on Covenant's album are more or less all pop tunes with scarcely a trace of Cage's vital indeterminacy.
  39. ↑ "BBC Press Office, Cage Uncaged". February 21, 2007.
  40. ↑ "Guardian recording of 4′33". The Guardian (London). January 16, 2004.
  41. ↑ Lebrecht, Norman (December 11, 2010). "We're pitching the silence of John Cage against the noise of Simon Cowell". The Daily Telegraph (London). Archived from the original on January 21, 2011. Retrieved December 17, 2010.
  42. ↑ Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The. "NOLA The Cat Performs John Cage's 4'33"". YouTube. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  43. ↑ "John Cage's 4′33" for Christmas Number One 2010". Facebook. December 2009. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  44. ↑ Gilbert, Ben (October 4, 2010). "Cowell’s second festive humiliation?". Yahoo! Music. Archived from the original on October 18, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  45. ↑ "Sound of silence vies to be Christmas number one". The Daily Telegraph (London). October 16, 2010. Archived from the original on October 19, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  46. ↑ "Silence bids for Christmas number one". The Irish Times. October 15, 2010. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  47. ↑ Eaton, Andrew (October 5, 2010). "At time of writing, Cage Against The Machine has almost 16,000 followers on Facebook" (JP). Scotland on Sunday. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  48. ↑ "Shhh! It could REALLY be a silent night this Christmas... if Facebook has anything to do with it". Daily Mail (London). October 15, 2010. Archived from the original on October 20, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  49. ↑ "JOHN CAGE'S 4'33'' For Christmas Number One 2010". Facebook. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
  50. ↑ Goldacre, Ben (July 19, 2010). "John Cage's 4′33" for Xma ...". Twitter. Retrieved October 2010.
  51. ↑ Robertson, Colin (July 31, 2010). "Sound of silence to beat 'Si's X Factor'". The Sun (London). Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  52. ↑ Ewing, Tom (September 30, 2010). "John Cage's 4′33": the festive sound of a defeated Simon Cowell". The Guardian (London). Archived from the original on October 7, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  53. ↑ Temple-Morris, Eddy (October 27, 2010). "Once more unto the breach dear friends". Archived from the original on November 12, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  54. ↑ Luke Bainbridge. (December 13, 2010). "Why I'm backing Cage Against the Machine for Christmas No 1". The Guardian (London). Archived from the original on January 10, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2010.
  55. ↑ "Top 40 UK Official Singles Chart". Official Charts. December 25, 2010. Retrieved December 19, 2010.

References

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