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John Cage "4'33"

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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45,640 ✭✭✭✭Mr.Nice Guy


    John wrote:
    Actually, I have shown this video to children and they are less fussed about it than most grown ups. The idea of stopping and listening to the world around them is not a huge problem to them like it seems to be to you.

    I have no problem listening to silence. I have a problem listening to naive people telling me this silence is music when it is not.
    John wrote:
    To people who think this is not a work of magnificence I would say stop being sheep and open your ears and your mind.

    Open our ears to what? Nothing? Let's call a spade a spade.
    John wrote:
    No it wasn't, Cage worked out a very sound (pun intended) philosophy which led to him writing this piece. There is a very good reason why he's held in high regard in the world of music and they are the same reasons that James Joyce is held in high regard in literature, they did not go with the status quo and developed an entirely new way of approaching their art.

    It's laughable to compare Joyce to Cage. Joyce didn't publish a book with empty pages and call it a masterpiece. Though if he had would you spend hours reading it?
    John wrote:
    No, it would be music if people were willing to sit down and listen to it (they are).

    How does that make it music? You seem to think the sounds occurring elsewhere - noises in the background etc. - make this a legitimate piece of music which is a spurious claim as it has nothing to do with Cage's piece (or lack thereof)
    John wrote:
    Who says nothing is not worth celebrating?

    Sane people. ;)
    John wrote:
    "I've nothing to say and I'm saying it" - John Cage

    Indeed. Sadly there's people willing to listen to this chancer with nothing to say.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,135 ✭✭✭✭John


    Open our ears to what? Nothing? Let's call a spade a spade.

    But it's also a percussion instrument.
    It's laughable to compare Joyce to Cage. Joyce didn't publish a book with empty pages and call it a masterpiece. Though if he had would you spend hours reading it?

    No it's not at all. Cage made "unlistenable" music (beyond 4'33", he did compose many, many more pieces with deliberate sounds) and Joyce made an "unreadable" book. Cage himself felt that Joyce was a kindred spirit (and indeed dedicated a lot of his time to writing text and music around Finnegans Wake), he's not the only one who thought that way. You obviously have no knowledge of Cage beyond the superficial "him that wrote the silent piece", if you ever read any of Cage's interviews, essays and lectures you'd find that a lot of what Cage was trying to do with music, Joyce was trying to do with literature.
    How does that make it music? You seem to think the sounds occurring elsewhere - noises in the background etc. - make this a legitimate piece of music which is a spurious claim as it has nothing to do with Cage's piece (or lack thereof)

    Yes I do think that it's the noises in the background that make the music. It is not meant to be absolute silence as Cage wanted to show that absolute silence was impossible. He also wanted to show that all sound could be considered music if you give it the right setting (such as an auditorium filled with a paying audience and professional musicians), an idea of which 4'33" is an extreme but which has been taken in far more palatable terms in the decades that followed when sampling and the studio came to the fore and traditionally non-musical sounds became musical (such as the Beach Boys using sounds made from Coke cans and hip hop DJs using scratching and run off sounds which Cage also did in the 50s with his piece Rozart Mix). 4'33" is most interesting to me as the calm before the storm of opening the musical lexicon to the wide palette that it is now.
    Sane people. ;)

    I'm perfectly sane and am surrounded by people qualified to certify that.
    Indeed. Sadly there's people willing to listen to this chancer with nothing to say.

    Read Conversations with Cage and tell me that he's a chancer with nothing to say.


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