"Cage stated that 4'33" was, in his opinion, his most important work"
September 22, 2015 2:12 AM   Subscribe

 
  
posted by quinndexter at 2:22 AM on September 22, 2015 [17 favorites]


Not bad - albeit maybe a bit too derivative of Alphonse Allais’ 1897 piece Marche funèbre composée pour les funérailles d'un grand homme sourd.
posted by misteraitch at 2:23 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Alex Ross on 4'33".

Cage talking about the first performance:
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.
posted by kersplunk at 2:25 AM on September 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


Way to ruin the joke, BBC dude.
posted by Mezentian at 3:02 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I shouldn't have watched this with mute turned on.
posted by jefflowrey at 3:58 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


4'33" has shown up here at Mefi on numerous occasions, and in fact I'm pretty sure at least one FPP included this same BBC video clip (which is from 2010). That said, a quick perusal of some of those FPPs didn't turn it up, but it's almost certainly a double. Maybe the mods will let this post stand, though, since there's never enough commentary on Cage's controversial masterpiece!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:13 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


4'33 is my go-to karaoke jam.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:30 AM on September 22, 2015 [10 favorites]


The BBC always had problems broadcasting this piece on radio. In the early days (before Cage), transmitters were temperamental beasts and you always had an engineer or two on site keeping things going and following schedules. However, once the electronics got more reliable it become common to have unmanned transmitters rebroadcasting programmes either relayed from other transmitters or - more commonly - supplied by a special wired or microwave link.

As these were also the days before 24 hour broadcasting, the transmitters were set up to turn themselves on and off according to whether there any audio coming down the line. This trigger was set to around a minute of silence. Which was fine - unless you wanted to broadcast the stuff. Cage was out, and there were regular complaints to the BBC that the Two Minute Silence at 11am on Remembrance Day was always filled with background noise from the ceremony - birdsong, distant traffic noise, shuffling. The BBC wearily explained every time that if they didn't, then the transmitters in rural Rutland would switch off and the respectful silence of your home wireless would be replaced by static or the distant sounds of Radio Yodel from Hosenburg ob der Tauber.

These days, I think almost everything is digital with separate control signals, and it doesn't matter for TV anyway. I may be wrong; the BBC is uncomfortable talking about distribution control in too much detail, for obvious reasons. But dead air remains absolute anathema to broadcasters, so you won't hear this piece too often, even now. At least, not if there aren't pigeons in the background.
posted by Devonian at 5:31 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:05 AM on September 22, 2015


Dead air has come up on Kermode and Mayo's Film Review / Wittertainment... when Kermode has on occasion tried to instigate long periods of silence and Mayo (and probably the producers) have stopped him claiming that if the radio channel goes silent for too long it's assumed it's been knocked out in a war or something and the emergency broadcast automatically kicks in (they may have been slightly exaggerating for comedic effect)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:06 AM on September 22, 2015


Yes, radio stations generally have an emergency tape that starts after a certain amount of dead air (usually around a minute I think). This can cause problems when stations observe nationwide minute silences and whatnot.
posted by pinacotheca at 6:17 AM on September 22, 2015




From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Zombie Terry Gross with Dead Air . . .

Tonight on Dead Air, Zombie Terry Gross interviews Zombie John Cage, hmm?
 
posted by Herodios at 6:45 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Needs mimes.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:48 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Zane Lowe remix totally ruined it.
posted by michaelh at 7:13 AM on September 22, 2015


One of my goals is to go to a performance of 4'33" and play some really loud Mystikal on my shitty phone speakers, thus making Mystikal, like, part of the aleatoric evolution of the piece and the audience's symbiosis and whatnot
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 7:16 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mod note: The old orchestra link is down, and it's been a while, so I'm inclined to let this one ride.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:19 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Hmph. I just performed this a bunch of times in a row. Good morning!
posted by sexyrobot at 7:46 AM on September 22, 2015


I could just listen to them tune for this.
posted by y2karl at 7:53 AM on September 22, 2015


I was present at a performance of 4'33" by the American pianist Margaret Lee Teng at Hong Kong City Concert Hall in the early 1990s. It turned out to be (for me) one of life's magical moments... 800+ people sitting together in the quietness of breathing, the ambient sound occasionally briefly layered with a rising and then falling sound leaking in from the outside (a police siren). An extraordinary four minutes and forty-three seconds, indeed.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:42 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


I prefer the Frank Zappa cover.
posted by terrapin at 9:07 AM on September 22, 2015


My husband plays this for his humanities students prior to a discussion on what makes art and music.
posted by harrietthespy at 9:48 AM on September 22, 2015


flapjax at midnite: I did search through previous posts before submitting this. The only link to this performance I found was in the FPP from last year on Where is the Drama?, where it's a minor detail and doesn't feature at all in the discussion.
posted by Spinda at 2:56 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


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