OT: Musical Opinions

Post by **Nanohedron** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:37 pm

Cage's work, BTW, not Zoob's. Bravo, Zubivka!

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:43 pm

brownja wrote:The real hoot in all this comes later when another composer includes a minute of silence and is sued for copyright infringement.

According to Larry Solomon the piece is not silent but only the absence of intentional sound. Since unintentional sound forms the basis of it, it can't be copied because unintentional sounds will vary from occasion to occasion. The ambient sounds will be different in different locations and different for each listener. Each period of "silence" will be a brand new composition. Suing someone for copyright infringement would be like suing someone because they used the same notes in a piece that you had used. Anyway, here's Solomon's abstract to his essay. Dig it.

The Sounds of Silence
John Cage and 4'33"
copyright © 1998 by Larry J Solomon

"ABSTRACT: The purpose of this essay is to examine the aesthetic behind Cage's "silent" composition, 4'33", to trace its history, and to show that it marked a significant change in John Cage's musical thought -- specifically how it forms a point-of-no-return from the conventional communicative, self-expressive and intentional purpose of music to a radical new aesthetic that informs the field of unintentional sound, interpenetration, chance, and indeterminacy. The compositional process is described, both the writing of 4'33" and its evolution from past thought. Implications for performance are examined, and recommendations are made. "

The whole thing can be found here: http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm#Conclusion

Steve

antstastegood · Post by **antstastegood** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:47 pm

I guess I'm uncultured and intolerant, but I don't even think it counts as music. Just one guy's ironic way of securing a name for himself. The saddest part is that there are actually people in the world who take it seriously.

Caj · Post by **Caj** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:52 pm

burnsbyrne wrote:I had an art history teacher way back in 1970 who insisted that the definition of art was "whatever artists do". So, his entries in the faculty art exhibition that year were three unprimed canvases with one or two swaths of spray paint on them. I didn't get it then...I still don't get it. Ditto for musicians and other artists who are trying to MAKE A STATEMENT.

Personally I think the point of art is to trigger deep emotional responses in the viewer, of the kind that can not be triggered by mundane means.

Hence, when someone produces a work of art to "make a statement" or "make a point," I wonder if this is missing the whole point. If the statement is some concrete thing that you could simply tell people in plain words, then I think the artist is really just using an artistic medium for mundane communication, rather than art.

Caj

skh · Post by **skh** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 2:00 pm

I like listening to 4'33'' in a concert setting. Not many performers are brave enough to play it, though.

As with any piece of music, when the performers are finished, move away from their instruments (or put them down, but that doesn't apply here

), look up to their audience again, the tension that has build up during the piece is released, and there's a break which is usually filled with applause from the audience. Would you applaud after four and a half minutes of silence?

Once a recorder player at a contest played a certain set of pieces, then 4'33'', then again the same set of pieces. He didn't just perform, but wanted to make people think about listening, and about the value of live performances in times of perfect technical reproduceability of music (at least that was what he said in the interview in the radio coverage of the contest, unfortunately I didn't hear his recital).

Is this art? I can't judge, but it is food for thought. "Music has to be better than silence, if it isn't, you can just as well stop playing." Quote from another recorder player in a master class setting.

Just rambling, and it all only applies to the highly intellectual world of modern classical music. 4'33'' wouldn't have a place in a folk session or concert, of course

Sonja

jim stone · Post by **jim stone** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 2:54 pm

Sometime 'art' is an honorific reserved
for good art, but I agree with Wombat that
'art' should be defined so that bad art is
art, too. Most art is bad art, in fact;
consider my poetry and most people's
paintings.

Sometimes art is conceptual--it's saying something
about what art is or isn't. I don't like conceptual
art so well, personally; and I have a theory
that you get it when an artform is dying,
it's subject matter exhausted. Bach,
Mozart, even Stravinsky were too busy
making gorgeous music to have time
to do conceptual art. But there's only so
much in a genre, and when it begins to
be exhausted, the genre itself becomes
its own subject, for want of another.

It's plain, isn't it, that painting, sculpting, poetry, and
classical music have lost their audience, largely?
When I was a boy there were famous contemporary
poets about whom we were excited. Nobody
I know like that today. Same goes for painting.
And the only classical composers I know write
for the cinema, largely.

I suspect that what was worth doing in these
artforms may have been exhausted--how long
could baroque go on? Romantic? At a certain
point the artforms became their own subject
matter: that's what abstract or modern art
has done, the painting represents...itself.
That was extraordinarily vital at the beginning
of the last century, but it marked the beginning
of the end....rather like leaves turning red
in the fall. Dada, covered brilliantly on
another thread, was part of the death throes,
as was conceptual art.

I suppose the cinema will be the great
artform for....awhile. Best

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 3:09 pm

Of course it's art, and I believe it's beautiful, but requires more in depth understanding than many other compositions, so many people automatically write it off as garbage before they even seriously try to understand it. .

Switchfoot · Post by **Switchfoot** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 10:48 pm

Actually, since it was brought up I'll throw in a random accedent. My best friend is planning on "playing" variations on it for his senior recital (hes a composition major) if he needs a way to burn up time

As for my own oppinions on the piece, I personally believe that its an interesting concept (or thesis) put into action and I believe that it was played out in the fashion that Cage wanted it too. Is it Art? first you would have to define what is art. Is it music? Most likely not, I always assumed that in order to have music then you'd have to have some kind of melody line, though his idea of music just being organized sound is vaguely interesting. I personally disagree, but that is because of my own pesonal taste in music. Mainly I guess Im surprised that no one did it before him.

Caj · Post by **Caj** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 11:56 pm

Switchfoot wrote: Mainly I guess Im surprised that no one did it before him.

If someone did, how would we know?

Caj

ErikT · Post by **ErikT** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:32 am

I have been through the training to become elite. Seriously. I have my masters in how to make art. In my case, architecture. I have 3000 ways to say something is a wall. 4000 for a window. I can tell an emotional story about my decision to place a floor drain where I did. "This receptical for aquious waste is placed near the water closet to focus one's thoughts about the downward spiral of the human intellect.... yada yada yada." If you like, I'll be happy to talk to you about the emotional experience of entering or the dislocation of turning a corner.

So it was with great delight that I read Dave Barry's article this past Sunday. While Dave was funny, the bottom line is not so much: Today's understanding of Art is simply another means for claiming superiority over another. Frankly, looking back on my training, I find it juvenile and in many ways un-erudite. The artistic intellegensia, if you will, take great delight in the belief that if I don't get it then I must not be intelligent enough or thought about it long enough. Further, they find exceptional gratification from the fact that they do get it.

What about the conclusion that it's simply a farse? Or that perhaps, having thought about it, I've come to the conclusion that it is beneath the skills of a craftsman or artist. In this, I laugh every time I see someone trying to paint an abstract piece that can't even create a convincing flower. "I call this 'Red Line on Black Canvas' - feel the art." I call it a waste of time, canvas, and money.

The parallel, in my mind, is exact in regard to 4'33" or 8 foot 3 inches, or whatever you want to call it.

Erik

p.s. while I do feel this way in general, I am more wishy-washy than my prose. I'm not quite as dogmatic as I sound. Like most things, I try to take them on a case by case basis rather than lumping them into groups with easy to remember names. 4'33" is only interesting to me as a concept, not a performance. The questions that flow out of that concept interest me more than the applause that the performance might generate.

Crysania · Post by **Crysania** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 8:25 am

Well, John Cage is generally considered to be more of a musical philosopher than a composer. While he did write some actual pieces, many of his works were more philosophical than musical. He firmly believed that all sounds were music. And to this end, 4'33" was written. The music during the piece is created by the audience, not the performer...the rustle of papers, the whispers, the shifting in chairs, even the possible giggles. While I have a hard time with this philosophy and I certainly don't agree with his assertation that all sounds are music, it's an interesting concept and yes, more of a statement than a piece of music.

This concept of chance music grew out of composer's reactions to the ultra-serialism (complete organization of all the elements of music...epitomized in the music of Babbitt, etc.) of the previous years. Instead of completely organizing music, they completley UNorganized it. The interesting thing is that, often, chance music played on the piano will often sound like total serial music played on the piano (to my ears at least). At any rate...I digress...

Terry Riley's In C...this makes a great sort of "functional" music. During a new music festival I was attending a few years back, this was performed in a room where people were mingling and having refreshments, etc. The performers stood around the outside of the room and would play, or not play, when they wanted to. It made for a great atmosphere.

~Crysania

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 9:23 am

Just a few quick comments on some points that have emerged.

First, I don't think that Cage's own theories much influenced how people understood or reacted to the challenge posed by this piece. Generations of students have had to puzzle over the question of whether it is art and whether it is a genuine composition regardless of their views about Cage's own theories.

Second, most of us have been pretty dismissive, but I think there is something important about this piece that hasn't come out clearly yet. Having said without hesitation that it is art but very bad art, I later puzzled over why I was so darned confident in my view. After all, the way the piece has been taken, even if this weren't really Cage's intention, is as a challenge to our definitional preconceptions. I then realised that I did my puzzling over this issue as a teenager about 30 years ago and haven't even given it a moment's thought since, even though I write professionally about boundaries, definitions and marginality.

We have been discussing this piece without taking any notice of the cultural background against which it appeared. Jim mentioned that 'art' is often used as an honorific word; nothing counts as art unless it is worthy. This use of the term was common until the mid 60s but has all but disappeared from our thinking today. My parents, for example, would have denied that blues, jazz, world, folk or pop music could possibly be art. The only music that counted as art was western concert music. They used terms like 'good music', 'serious music' and 'fine music' as pretty much synonymous with classical music, as though Robert Johnson and Charley Parker were frivolous. Against this highly predjudiced background, Cage's challenge made much more sense then than it does now when every village idiot iconoclast has a Cage-like trick up his sleeve to get undeserved attention. The battle to have other forms of music recognised as art has been won and we shouldn't forget that Cage played a minor role in bringing that about.

Finally, just a quick comment on Jim's point that conceptual art is characteristic of a tradition in terminal decline. If you look at 20th century art movements this is a plausible view although equally plausible is the view that modernist artistic self consciousness is a product of a civilization in crisis but not necessarily in decline. Some wonderful art has been produced that doesn't speak for a loss of vitality but rather for an incapacity of the past to suggest fruitful paths into the future. Some of the finest self conscious literature can't plausibly be construed as the product of a style played out. Just to take literature. Sir Thomas Browne (17th century) writes in a style that defies categorisation, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (18th century) is perhaps the greatest shaggy dog story ever told and, although one of the earliest novels, challenges in hilarious ways our very idea of what a novel can be while Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (17th century) is a brilliant response to writer's block: if you're too depressed to write, just write a great and lengthy treatise on depression. Each of these writers is modernist in some aspects of the way he approaches the task of producing literature, but none of these works are indicative of a culture in decline.

ErikT · Post by **ErikT** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 11:53 am

So my question then, Wombat, is: Is a social statement inherently art. Can I simply declare art or must there be something more? Does Cage's contribution in broadening the muscial palette convey upon his work the status of art or is it simply a statement? Are important things art simply because an artist does them? The answers to these questions, I believe, have much bearing on the nature of social context in art.

I think that we have elevated the soap box to an art form. The statement has become art rather than the object. I'm not convinced that this is a healthy redefinition and in my opinion devalues whatever it is that art is. I refer again to the painter that can't paint. The composer that can't compose. The architect that can't build. I do not believe that art is philosophy or that philosophy is art.

On the flip side (and to counter my own argument a bit), we are also talking about vocabulary. And in this, social context has much to grant in it's understanding. I do not have the vocabulary to appreciate in any depth the intricacies of an Asian melody. And yet this says more about my lack of vocabulary than any lack on the part of the Asian composer. So within our own context, it is often the duty of the avantgarde artist to instruct us in their vocabulary. But then again, I have found that these new vocabularies are most often vehicles for pride and self-agrandizement than for any true artistic intent.

Finally, as one who finds craft important, I also tend to project that into my estimation of art. To me, art is successful to the extent that the craft of it's making is exceptional and it's communication eloquent. I remember the maxim "Master the rules and then learn to break them." I find art from artists that can do that much more interesting and satisfying.

- Ramble off

-

ERik

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:25 pm

Erik, I doubt whether we really have a disagreement here. I'll just give you my answers without trying to justify them more than I have already.

ErikT wrote:So my question then, Wombat, is: Is a social statement inherently art. Can I simply declare art or must there be something more? Does Cage's contribution in broadening the muscial palette convey upon his work the status of art or is it simply a statement? Are important things art simply because an artist does them? The answers to these questions, I believe, have much bearing on the nature of social context in art.

Well, I don't think the Cage composition is art becasue it's important or because it says something or because Cage presented it as such. My reasoning was just that a period of time containing no sounds is a limiting case of a minimalist composition. It's a composition so a performance of it is therefore music. It is a musically vacuous composition of course so it is bad art and a performance of it is bad music. It might be good social commentary or it might provoke good social commentary but that is another matter. There's no reason why some art can't be bad art.

ErikT wrote:I think that we have elevated the soap box to an art form. The statement has become art rather than the object. I'm not convinced that this is a healthy redefinition and in my opinion devalues whatever it is that art is. I refer again to the painter that can't paint. The composer that can't compose. The architect that can't build. I do not believe that art is philosophy or that philosophy is art.

In general neither do I. But Cage might have produced bad art in the service of good philosophy. Hume writes beautifully so I have no problem with the idea that his books are good art (literature) and good philosophy. I'm not sure that one can do philosophy through any work of art other than a piece of good literature; I rather doubt it. In the case of minimalist works you'd want not to call art, what's wrong with my calling the blank canvas a bad painting, the blank period of time a bad composition and the blank space a bad piece of architecture. My wanting to call Cage's piece a composition is no big deal .. I just can't see how it differs significantly from a one note composition and don't want to deny that a composition with only a few notes is a composition. One can still register the opinion that it's artistic worth is nil.

ErikT · Post by **ErikT** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 1:01 pm

Yes, actually I was agreeing with you in a backhanded way

My own questions were actually meant as questions, to which I don't have the answers, but then proceeded to postulate a few.... so I didn't offer them as rhetoritcal questions, but rather some questions that I still have to answer in my own mind. So, yes, I think we were agreeing.

In the case of minimalist works you'd want not to call art, what's wrong with my calling the blank canvas a bad painting, the blank period of time a bad composition and the blank space a bad piece of architecture. My wanting to call Cage's piece a composition is no big deal .. I just can't see how it differs significantly from a one note composition and don't want to deny that a composition with only a few notes is a composition. One can still register the opinion that it's artistic worth is nil.

LOL! Brilliant. Yes, I think that hits the heart of it. The only issue is that the aforementioned intellegensia have a tendancy to not accept that answer as valid. The truth is that I have a tendancy to seek validation in my ideas as much as anyone, and don't take too well to being considered a troglodyte (edited because I spelled troglodyte wrong - hey, that's funny

). This pushes me to the other extreem in wanting to deny it's existence as art and simply laugh them off the stage. But I agree that I should resist this temptation and simply call it uninteresting art.