Discussion of John Cage's 4'33"

Piste

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Dudess and Piste - out of curiosity, how would you define music?

Something with tones. Any tones!* Even if 4"33 were just a single note being played on repeat for 4 minutes and 33 seconds I'd grudgingly accept it's music. Music isn't the same as sound, 4"33 is sound, and not even sound created by the Composer, the sort of sound heard in 4"33 can be heard everywhere, and doesn't need to be "performed" to be appreciated.



*following on from this, I wouldn't consider drumming on its own to be music as it's just rhythm.

Norrdeth

Piste wrote: »

Something with tones. Any tones!* Even if 4"33 were just a single note being played on repeat for 4 minutes and 33 seconds
*following on from this, I wouldn't consider drumming on its own to be music as it's just rhythm.

You're contradicting yourself there as technically drums do have notes as everything resonates at a certain pitch even furniture and walls.
I in fact would consider percussion musical and not only the tuned sort, ever hear of Timbral music? I'm sure a drum solo would be significantly more musical then a repeated drone on a piano.

cornbb

Piste wrote: »

*following on from this, I wouldn't consider drumming on its own to be music as it's just rhythm.

Drumming also has timbre, structure, repetition, tempo and plenty of other musical characteristics. If you start using the presence/lack of such characteristics as a basis of what defines music you'll find yourself running into many brick walls. I find that "organised sound" is a good broad simple definition of what constitutes music.

Drums do not necessarily have any tone/fundamental pitch btw.

The following piece (also by John Cage) does have tones, would you consider it music at all, and if so would it be more or less musical than a drum solo?

(You might need to crank the volume up a bit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVN_mxVntXk

4"33 is sound, and not even sound created by the Composer, the sort of sound heard in 4"33 can be heard everywhere, and doesn't need to be "performed" to be appreciated.

And that is exactly the purpose of 4'33", the point is to make people listen to ambient sounds in relative silence. Doing it in the context of a "performance" just facilitates this process.

The Mad Hatter

Piste wrote: »

Something with tones. Any tones!* Even if 4"33 were just a single note being played on repeat for 4 minutes and 33 seconds I'd grudgingly accept it's music. Music isn't the same as sound, 4"33 is sound, and not even sound created by the Composer, the sort of sound heard in 4"33 can be heard everywhere, and doesn't need to be "performed" to be appreciated.



*following on from this, I wouldn't consider drumming on its own to be music as it's just rhythm.

Fair enough, though I disagree with you on the point of drum music - African drum music, as well as Steve Reich's Drumming which was inspired by it, is amazing.

Not sure whether I mentioned it earlier on these pages, but 4'33" isn't one of my favourite pieces. However, I'd still rather listen to it than something by Harrison Birtwistle for instance.

(Or Chopin, but that's just me.)

funky penguin

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

(Or Chopin, but that's just me.)

:eek:

The Mad Hatter

funky penguin wrote: »

:eek:

Yeah, yeah.

Just never found it really that interesting - always thought Scriabin's music in the same vein was much more moving.

The Agogo

My philosophy is that Music= sound + maths .

This piece has no maths.

Other than that, after three years doing a postgrad PhD, I submitted my theses entitled : 'The Effects of Silence on the Written Page: Cage's Contribution to the Genre' - all that I gave in was four and half blank pages.

Of course it was obvious that I was taking the piss so, needless to say, they never gave me my doctorite.

BTW, Anyone know where i can download the score for this?

Norrdeth

You'll have to find it somwhere in public domain, it's illegal to download and photocopy music janow