Originally Posted by JustinJJustin

Just "listened" to 4'33". There is no way your ever going to find me calling this music. There was nothing. Absolutely fuck all going on. Sorry if I seem harsh, but I truly don't get how this can be classified as music. Honestly, Justin Bieber is doing better than this. Even with fuck all talent. Now I guess you could call it art (really shitty fucking art), but nonetheless art. Now I ask, what makes this art? What do people get out of it? Also, if you do consider this music, then I guess when I am alone in silence, that is considered music. Anybody can sit in silence. Anybody could record them sitting in silence. Words can't even describe how shocked I am, that people consider this music. Somebody explain before I lose my head.

Originally Posted by Frownland

Yes I think it's music, I'd even go so far as saying I know it's music. I don't think it's up for the listener to decide if something is music or not, since they don't necessarily understand where the artist is coming from with the composition. I think with 4'33 since the piece is a radical idea and makes an artistic statement, a lot of people decide that it's not music but more along the lines of a musically political piece. I disagree. With 4'33, John Cage was trying to prove two things: that silence does not exist for humans and that the mere noise of the world around us has musical potential.

In a lecture (or possibly essay, I forget) about Indeterminacy, John Cage talked about his visit to an anechoic chamber. An anechoic chamber is a room where virtually every echo is suppressed and it creates an almost entirely silent room. When he entered the room, he heard two noises, one high and one low. The high noise was the nervous system in operation and the low was the blood running through his system. Though we might get the impression otherwise, as long as we exist, we will never get the opportunity to experience silence.

For the second point of the piece, Cage was unlocking the potential of the sounds around us. Every sound has the possibility to be utilized as music. Consider field recordings, where an artist records ambient sounds of location out in nature or a bustling city. If that's considered music, then why wouldn't 4'33 be? It takes that idea and brings it to a live setting. One of the greatest parts of the piece is that it's different every time.

In the piece, the focus is taken away from the instruments and forces the audience to consider the sounds outside of the instruments (more specifically the sounds of an orchestral hall) as being part of the music where in a standard setting they would just be annoyed by it. Because at the time of the piece, few people had considered sounds like that to be music, John Cage had to take a confrontational approach to prove his point. Moments where the instruments are silent are often an important point in compositions, but with 4'33 it consumes that idea and forces us to look outside of the instruments for the new Cage premiere.

Another way to look at it is that music is art, and many people would define art as being whatever the artist considers to be art for his/her piece. Why would it be any different for music?

Also Brad brought up a really good point that many people think of music as organized sound. Even though I think it goes beyond that, 4'33 is extremely organized. It's written in three movements with several different lengths of silence that in the end add up to 4 minutes and 33 seconds, hence the name of the piece.

Some would say that if we think of pieces like 4'33 as music, then everything becomes music and in turn the term becomes meaningless. But I'd say that this piece breaks down conventional standards in true avant-garde fashion but doesn't make the idea of music meaningless, it just widens the umbrella term.

I think that the most inspirational Cage quote on the piece is this:



That's all I got for now. Music and sound are one and the same.