Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
After the intellectual hothouse debate about 4´33", here´s something that keeps things refreshingly simple; a leisurely illustration of sounds as music, filmed among the Malinke people in Mali :-
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That was incredible, I really enjoyed that. John Cage would cry tears of joy if he saw that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chula Vista
That was great.
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I mean it's obviously edited and planned for music beyond silence (at least past the first four minutes of the video), but why do you enjoy this and not 4'33"? Or do you think they're both great? The beginning of the video was great, for me, because it sounded like you were just sitting in the middle of the village listening to all the tradesman doing their thing and it just worked out perfectly in rhythm. It was a moment like that where John Cage thought to himself (something along the lines of) "holy sh
it that counts too doesn't it? F
uck those who say it doesn't, I'm going to show them why this is incredible."
For a little bit of background on John Cage so you can understand his (and my) position on 4'33", he was a fan of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is where you don't know what's going to happen in the piece, usually done through chance operations where the composer will compose a piece until he comes to a question, at which point he turns to a somewhat random way of answering that question. That question could be what note to play, what interval to jump, what period to rest or play at; the answer could be provided by something like the I Ching (as Cage used), an abacus, a coin flip, a random numbers table, or a function generator. Given that 4'33" is really the most aleoteric piece Cage ever wrote (and he used this method for the greater part of his work), what makes this piece different from "
Music of Changes"?
If 4'33" were played during the first four minutes and thirty three seconds of Lisnahoic's video while a local musician started talking to you (there is some clearly planned percussion that occurs after the four minute mark which is why I make this distinction), would you consider it music? If not, do you think you would reach a decision to find a kind of middle ground, like musical, but not music?
It's a happy day when you're like "ja, 4'33" is musc", I'm just helping you feel that happiness, brother. I was once like you.