4'33"

[MajestikMøøse]

Best piece of music ever.

 

[Nitronium Blood]

.

 

[angelofdeath9308]

"4'33'' is music reduced to nothing, and nothing raised to music. It cannot be heard, and is heard anywhere by anyone at any time. It is the extinction of thought, and has provoked more thought than any other music of the second half of the twentieth century." — Paul Griffiths.

I think most of the creativity (genius some may call it) lies not in the music, since there is none, but the concepts or questions this raises, since Cage reasoned that no matter what, there will always be sound, until death (which is true), or the question "what is music anyways?"

 

[JoeVice]

is it seriously silence? hmmm..."has provoked more thought than any other music of the second half of the twentieth century."<-----hmmmm...i dunno if you can call this music. in the context of music, it does provoke thought...i guess.

 

[Jude]

I have no idea what it is, but "music pushed to its logical extreme" (same with art or whatever) is virtually always garbage made by attention whores/drugged up nutjobs.

 

[Autumnal]

The one point though is if this is "played" for an audience (which has no knowledge of what's to come, it will take the form of a composition. It builds from silence, eventually crescendoing and having a climax when the audience's frustrations or conversations, etc. reach their peak. Granted, for Cage I am more of a 'Williams Mix' fan, and really I'd rather spend my time listening to something like Steve Reich's "Come Out to Show Them" over "4'33",m but either way the best music creates atmosphere and emotion, and I feel that "4'33" probably created some intense atmosphere given the correct audience.

 

[Goober]

im still lost at what 4'33" is....maybe somebody can explain it in actual english for idiots like me.

 

[ViCyniC]

im still lost at what 4'33" is....maybe somebody can explain it in actual english for idiots like me.

4 minutes and 33 seconds.

 

[Jude]

I think it's just 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Passed off as "music."

What is the world coming to?

 

[Goober]

so.....its just sitting in silence for 4 minuets and 33 seconds....and during that time you'll hear the music that is the silence?

 

[Biddinger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4'33"

 

[DE]

My guess is this thread's going to get deleted, but here goes anyway. I had to write a paper on 4'33" for music history class a couple years ago. I read a bunch of interviews with John Cage and descriptions of his earlier work than it, and it really does fit logically with his oeuvre. It isn't about the silence, as everyone says, his idea was that the piece would be the reaction of the audience. Since typically they will get more and more restless as the time elapses, the "piece" then has form and structure. Cage was always about atypical "music" and pieces that would never be performed the same way twice, so 4'33" is hardly any less music than many of his other works. A strange guy, and it's interesting conceptually (more interesting than I've stated here, there's more to it that I can't remember), but obviously it isn't something I enjoy "hearing" performances of.

correct!

 

[etakistan]

If it wasn't for rebellious music works like this, music would still follow classical stuctures and compositional requirements and be pretty boring.

Music would not have broken off into strange genres like noise or industrial of advantgrae or much more.


It's like those rebellious artists that decided a blob will do for a portrait. Sure, it looks stupid, but it helped people thing "ZOMG! I can do anything I want!"



y'see?