Chess and Music

Precisely 

Though, there are much worse names out there, like Help! She Can't Swim and the like.  I can't remember some of the more egregious examples.

Do you need hips to be one TB?

No, in fact the appearance of possessing hips is actively discouraged; this is why skinny jeans that are practically tatooed onto the legs are the preferred costuming.

Okay. Grey-skin pencil jeans get the picture.

Those are expensive. The odd case of less being more.

If you want to cut off the circulation to your lower extremities.

But then you dance even better.

Classical music tends to be more fitting. But that's probably only because it tends to be soothing and helsp the thinking process. - Allegedly.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o

I don't think I've ever seen this with pauses between the movements.  It makes it longer than the title would suggest.

Clasical music only

I don't listen to much classical, but I do enjoy William Joseph once in a while.

For that work or for music in general?

I'm a huge fan of Rachmaninoff & Beethoven when studying chess or thinking about online (correspondence) chess games.

When playing drunk blitz I usually have some kind of techno/dubstep/house (etc.) on.

I'm not too familiar with the creation story of 4'33".  It's possible since Cage did a lot of experimenting with large silences with sparse notes prior to it.  Sometimes he'd start and end pieces with large silences, like his As Slow As Possible.

I think the problem with putting pauses between the movements is that one on the big points of the piece is the duration.  4'33" of ambient noise becomes much longer when signifigant pauses are added, as in the video shown.  The piece is also about the audience expectation and social norms, as well as the heightened focus on sounds at the concert hall.  These are all lost on a video, but that can't be helped.

If I'd compose a musical piece of over 4 minutes of pure silence, it would be worth crap.

But if Mr. Cage does the same, it's suddenly a piece of art. Needless to say that I don't get it.

Pff. How anti-cultural you are.

It's not silence, it's... well... silence, but not the silence as if there is no sound. It's the absence of sound, not the sound of the absence of noise, err I mean...

At least this doesn't get bought thousand of dollars. Some painting is much worse for that. A good friend of mine told there are two taxes on stupidity for rich people : casino, and contemporary art.

I'm not anti-cultural, I'm just saying that it takes absolutely no effort to come up with something identical as Cage did. Do you admire the piece '4"33'? Good for you ... and if I will compose a piece worth of, not 4, not 5, but solid 10 minutes of uninterupted silence, would you admire that too?

Why? It took no effort. It's like saying: I'm the best chess player ever, because yesterday I won against a kindergarden class in a simul game!

It was irony. Saying it requires no effort is not true, it requires to think of it (the music writing in itself is indeed not hard). But yes, it requires some effort - as much as picking one's pocket requires effort : that doesn't mean it's worth something.

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