I believe there's a deep and very profound meaning behind 4'33, and I can respect that. But the effort to compose such a piece of music? Zilch.
Chess and Music
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Mar 7, 2013
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#63
Eseles wrote:
theTigerWhoCametoTea wrote:
BTW, I prefer silence
Here's some music for you
John Cage's 4'33" performed by William Marx
It's disappearing right up your backside. Which makes it a perfect expression/example of Art Music.
Doggy_Style wrote:
theoreticalboy wrote:
No, see, it's okay, because even though I'm out of the current U.S. loop, I still can argue Times New Viking were better when they were noisy, point out I have a set of four tickets for the next Deerhoof show, enjoy Juusho Futei Mushoko as they are and claim "lack of irony is the new irony," and also state unambiguously Shonen Knife covering My Bloody Valentine is better than all original My Bloody Valentine, so I can keep the hipster aura that way.
This is all music, right?
(I was never a hipster, so I don't worry about being exposed as a normie)
I think I liked it better when tb was talking about movies...
Cage's work took more effort than what some people think and there is meaning to it. The point isn't just "silence," if one can really call it silence. An important part of music is duration, so Cage wanted to experiment with something that solely focused on duration, without any of the other musical elements of pitch, timbre and intensity. It also calls out social norms and expectations. It would have taken a lot of guts from the performer of the premier to sit at the piano and sit there in silence. There was also an attempt at the time to separate society's influence on the composer and performer from the performance. Cage rationalized that the way to do this was to create a work that relied on the random sounds within the concert hall rather than the performer.
Another important fact is that Cage did it first. Writing a piece of music that is just a different duration of "silence" would just mean you're copying Cage. Of course, I've joked with my friends about writing a set of theme and variations on 4'33". Right now it calls for a lot of improv, lasting any where from 4'34" to several months/years/centuries, depending on how long the piano goes untouched. :-p
Yes, obviously. What I question is whether the innovation is great because it's an innovation. This is kind of a 'menhir syndrome' : evaluating some work as great because it took time to achieve or to think of.