258: SILENT SYMPHONY

The myth

Composer John Cage’s best-known work, 4’33”, consists of silence.

The “truth”

The point of this piece in three movements, according to the man himself, is that it isn’t silent – because there is no such thing. Premiered in New York in 1952, it consisted of a pianist seating himself at his instrument, placing his score on the music stand, closing the lid of the joanna, and timing himself on a stopwatch as he sat without playing for 33 seconds. He then opened and closed the lid, turned the page on his score, reset the watch and sat for a further 2 minutes 40 seconds. The final movement lasted for 1 minute 20. He then rose, bowed to the audience, and left the stage. Cage’s score was marked “Tacet”, meaning that an instrument does not sound during that passage. Some listeners interpreted the performance angrily as a kind of practical joke, or a two-fingered salute to the musical establishment. But Cage later explained: “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.” In other words, during what some critics have since declared one of the most important musical moments of the 20th century, the listeners were supposed to be listening to found sound – not to silence profound.

Disclaimer

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Sources

www.classical-music.com/features/works/what-is-the-pointof-john-cage-433/; www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2012/09/05/160339846/silence-and-sound-five-ways-of-understanding-john-cage?t=1652100474755; www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2010/10/04/searching-for-silence

Mythchaser

Is it true, a reader wonders, that the worse your reaction to an inoculation, the better your protection?