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RE: John Cage

Posted by radiodaddy (A) on October 29, 2014 at 12:34:30

In Reply to: John Cage posted by middleground on October 29, 2014 at 03:04:48:

As part of Cage's intent was for the piece to be played for an audience, it's debatable that any recording of it is valid.

That said, Cage set out to do a number of things with the composition: to highlight the importance of silences in music, especially his own work; to focus the audience's attention on the environment in which they hear a musical work; and to highlight the role that time (in the temporal, not musical, sense) plays in a composition - a musical work exists in a finite block of time, and all that it is must come between the beginning and the end of that block.

A recording would introduce another factor to the second point above: instead of the sounds of the hall, other audience members, outside noises, traffic, etc., the listener would hear the surface noise of the record, turntable rumble, amplifier hum, the whir of a disc transport, sounds of the listening room, other appliances etc. It would still fulfill the purpose of making the listener actively consider all the elements that go into their perception of music.

Per the first and third, there is almost a meditative aspect to the piece. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds is on its face a fairly brief period, but if you are asked to sit in silent concentration for that period, your perception of time will shift. If you truly focus on the details of the sounds you hear over that stretch to the exclusion of other stimuli, it will appear to lengthen, and you begin to understand the nature of time, not merely as a measuring rod, but as a "container" into which a nearly infinite variety of sensations and perceptions can be fit. When afterward you listen to a performance of a traditional piece of music (that is, one with instruments making sounds), the places where the composer and performer do not place notes become as important as the places they do (something good musicians know well, but many listeners do not).

Edits: 10/29/14 10/29/14 10/29/14

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