Quote:
Originally Posted by Chula Vista
There's the rub. If 4'33 were the musicians on stage not playing, but sniffling, moving about, murmuring, snorting, farting, clanging things against music stands, etc., then it's music.
But to sit there in complete silence and completely rely on the audience and the surrounding ambient noise to provide "the music"; that's where 4'33 turns into performance art.
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I curse Marcel Duchamp daily for putting a urinal on a pedastel and changing the opinions of "What is art?" forever but I digress --
OK, with that in mind, if I take a musical staff, and write in two 8th rests, four sixteenth rests, two 8th rests, and four more sixteenth rests, I have just wrote a bar of music, didn't I? If I repeat that over and over, its still sheet music....The silence is forced (thats the music part)....trying to force the natural ambience in 4'33 into the void is still purposeful, and therefore music.......... I guess it would be like carrying an empty picture frame around and holding it up anywhere: The artist can make an argument that he's purposely framing something behind him and calling it "art" ....when he takes it away, you can still see whatever it was now without the frame around it, because there is no intent now, its just background (Id be really surprised if an artist hasn't done this)
Gawd, I really do dislike these kind of artsy-fartsy idioms.........Thank you again, Marcel Duchamp <sarcasm intended>