OT: Musical Opinions

[Darwin]

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....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.

I'm probably being overly literal, but doesn't the word "composition" imply something that is "composed" of smaller units? If there is only one unit (the time), then it is a unity, not a composition.

Even if we take a period of time to be composed of smaller units of time, composition also implies some kind of explicit arangement of elements, and since--as far as I know--Cage did not arrange the ordering of minutes and/or seconds in his 4'33", then he didn't compose anything.

The most that could be claimed is that he ordered the 4-minute-33-second period of not making any intentional sounds between two periods of making intentional sounds, in which case the composition should have been named "4'33" Plus".

As to whether it's music, to me music requires musical tones, which Cage's "composition" is not guaranteed to have, even if it's extended by one second on either end.

I'm not willing to take rhythm alone as music, but even if I were, rhythm requires repetition. Since 4'33" doesn't include any repetition, it has no rhythm.

While music has duration, duration is not a defining character of music, or else every event that has duration could be cited as an example of music.

With neither tone nor rhythm, there are no explicitly-musical elements. With no musical elements, there is no reason to call it "music".

The omission of all elements of an art form is not sufficient to define something as belonging to that art form. An empty three-dimensional area is not a sculpture, and a blank wall is not a painting.

Of course, we're just arguing conventions here. Even though I don't see 4'33" as fitting any useful definition of "music", I might be williing to accept it as an example of "performance art", as long as the defining elements on either end of the period are included.

The whole good art/bad art question seems to me to be a matter of taste, and thus beyond definition.

[ErikT]

The whole good art/bad art question seems to me to be a matter of taste, and thus beyond definition.

One would think, but we tend to act in a way that most of us understand the definition even if we are not able to articulate it.

p.s. I like your analysis of the piece, though it does have rhythm, if not metered rhythm and it does have organization, if not orchestrated organization.

[ScottStewart]

I have to agree with Darwin's post. As a past student of music, and having performed nearly every major style of music, I have to say that 4'33" was probably a joke conceived in Cage's mind. It does not qualify as music. There is no context for the silence, nor are there any components of music.

Also, as someone who suffers from tinnitus, I don't get the joke. I never experience silence. I wish I could.

[MarkB]

Post deleted because I misdirected it.

Sorry

MarkB

[emmline]

At the London Millennium Dome in 2000, (before it died an untimely death--we had fun there...I guess no-one else did,) there was a pavilion/exhibit called...I think...REST (?)...where you entered a womb-like cave, empty except for jugglers who'd come in and mesmerizingly juggle glow in the dark ball. Meanwhile a "musical composition" was playing which consisted of a continuously changing series of bells, gongs and the like--rather zen-like. Really was an intriguing, relaxing environment. The gimmick was that this "composition" (I guess computer generated) was programmed to run for 1000 years without repetition. I wonder if it's still running somewhere since the M. Dome is being converted into a business park or something.

[jim_mc]

Thanks for all of your posts. Even if a few couldn't help going the route of intellectual analysis or quoting of professional critics.

4'33" was probably a joke conceived in Cage's mind.

That was my initial reaction, too. Sort of like Cage was looking to see if anyone would say that the Emperor was naked. From what I've read, it seems like the audience who attended (I guess I can't say heard) the first public performance reacted quite negatively. I probably would have too, if I had paid for a ticket to see and hear a concert and then sat and watched a guy open and close a piano's lid and manipulate a stopwatch. {By the way, there was a score written out, and the performers are supposed to turn the pages, raise and lower their instruments, etc.}

Then I thought (like Cranberry), maybe I'm not giving this a fair shot. The first time I heard Coltrane I didn't like him. It took repeated listening until I got it. But listening to 4'33" repeatedly only makes me attempt to intellectualize it more. It doesn't really change the way the piece affects me. By trying to intellectualize it, perhaps I'm falling victim to Cage's prank (if Scott is right).

Later audiences knew what they were in for when they went to a performance of 4'33". Perhaps many of them had already intellectualized it, or maybe they were looking forward to a few minutes of peace and quiet, or possibly some of them were just too cowardly to stand up and proclaim the emperor's willy to be showing.

I don't know the answers, but I do know that I won't be buying any tickets to see something done at Avery Fisher Hall that I could do just as well at home (well, if the kids were out for the day).

Thanks again for all your posts. I have another question ready (this first one kind of led up to it), and I'll post it after the weekend.

[Zubivka]

Sort of like Cage was looking to see if anyone would say that the Emperor was naked.

I like this shortcut! Or curt shot?

[Wombat]

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....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.

I'm probably being overly literal, but doesn't the word "composition" imply something that is "composed" of smaller units? If there is only one unit (the time), then it is a unity, not a composition.

................................................................................................

The omission of all elements of an art form is not sufficient to define something as belonging to that art form. An empty three-dimensional area is not a sculpture, and a blank wall is not a painting.


The whole good art/bad art question seems to me to be a matter of taste, and thus beyond definition.

I don't think you're being overliteral, just ignoring one of the elements. Musical composition involves the ordering of sounds and silences. At one extreme we can have all sound and no silence. At the other extreme we can have all silence and no sound. That involves conscious ordering of elements and is therefore a composition.

My calling it bad art was my way if registering the idea that, although art by my definition, which, by the way, is not meant to be stipulative, Cage's piece is nonetheless crap.

By your definition, if I'm not mistaken, the playing of a single note, say two minutes in for a couple of seconds, would add the element of melody and rhythm required to turn Cage's work into a piece of music. Well, wouldn't that be crap too? If this is not music, a sort of limiting case of a melody, what is required? Suppose I simply repeat the phrase C, G, C, G for a couple of minutes to a steady rhythm. That's obviously a melody. But it's still crap. So any definition that demands that there be sounds will have to say how many is enough to count and will still include cases that are just as worthless as Cage's piece. (Just tell me how many is enough and I'll write you a composition that meets your definition but is as artistically vacuous as the Cage piece.) This isn't the way to explain the intuition that what Cage did is aesthetically worthless.

Allowing that Cage's piece is, as a limiting and therefore degenerate case, a composition, seems to me a consequence of the only non-arbitrary way of understanding what a composition is. But it is excruciatingly boring so why can't that give us all the materials we need to insult it adequately? BTW, I don't buy into a simple subjectivism about taste but, if you do, I think you will have trouble saying why Cage's little gag is not of any artistic merit.

[elendil]

Anythin' shakin' over here?

[Wombat]

Anythin' shakin' over here?

We were confused something terrible till you dropped by to help out big boy.

[jim stone]

How bout Brian Eno, Music for Airports?

[jim_mc]

The atmosphere of our airports has changed soooo much since that piece was written that it is no longer relevant.

[jim_mc]