4′33″ - John Cage
The sound of silence
I would encourage you to listen to this piece before, or while reading this blog post.
On the evening of 29 August 1952, in a New York concert hall, David Tudor sat down at the piano to premiere John Cage’s latest work, 4’33”. Placing the score on the stand, he set a timer, closed the piano lid, and sat quietly. 33 seconds later, he opened the lid, set another timer, and closed it once more. He repeated this process a third time and then stood, bowed, and walked off stage to polite but feeble applause. Many in the audience considered it a joke. The premiere was met with widespread controversy and scandal.
Background
4’33” is a piece for any instrument or combination of instruments and consists of three movements which last, as the title suggests, for a total of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The score is devoid of musical notation and simply lists the movement numbers, each marked TACET, a Latin term indicating that an instrument should remain silent. Though the piece can last any length of time, the original premiere’s length remains the standard.
At first glance, this piece can seem like an exaggerated, inscrutable modern art stunt created by a man with too much spare time on his hands. However, the true intention of the piece is not to draw attention to the silence. As John Cage remarked on the premiere:
“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.“
During the premiere, environmental noises such as the blowing of the wind, the falling rain, and the murmurs of the audience themselves all contributed to the piece’s ultimate purpose: to take the focus away from the performer and place it on the environment instead.
What it means to me
The subversion of expectation that this piece commits is mischievous but brilliant. Its effect would’ve been most powerful on that evening in 1952 when an audience, so prepared for a traditional piano performance, was instead handed a lesson in listening.
4’33” is often linked to the roots of noise music, a genre which uses the randomness of environmental and other noise to break apart the traditional barriers of musical harmony. I appreciate it for the same reason I adore Hiroshi Yoshimura’s music (which I wrote about here) in that it draws attention away from the well-defined construct of music and highlights the beauty of the lived experience of sound.
As Cage says, silence doesn’t exist. The ‘silence‘ of this piece merely provides a frame, an invitation to notice the ordinary sounds of your own environment. In that sense, it remains one of the most timeless and personal pieces of music ever written, evolving and adapting itself to both the moment and listener.
What to listen for
Don’t listen to the silence.
Suggested listening activity
Actually listen to the piece. Sit down, put it on, and listen to it as you would any other piece of music.
