Page 306 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

304 INDETERMINACY, ALEATORY MUSIC, AND SILENCE

This concept is particularly evident examines the human perception
in Cage’s Imaginary Landscape and experience of the space
No.4 for 12 radios (1951), in which between things as a focus in its
the “performers” manipulate short- own right. Cage became fascinated
wave radios and so require no by the idea of silence and went to
proficiency in an instrument. Harvard University to experience The first question I
Cage remains the composer, as its anechoic chamber, in which ask myself when something
the various frequencies that the all sound is absorbed. Cage was doesn’t seem to be beautiful
operators must find are detailed in shocked to find that even there, he is why do I think it’s
the score, but the sounds received could still hear two sounds—one not beautiful. And very
by the radios depend on when and high, one low—which turned out shortly you discover
where the concert takes place to be the sounds of his own body. that there is no reason.
and are therefore unpredictable. In 4´33˝, Cage sought to portray John Cage
The result is white noise interrupted his realization that even in musical
by snatches of speech and music. silences, there was no true silence.
While audiences new to 4´33˝
Musical silence tend to think the work is absurd,
Cage’s seminal work, 4´33˝, in the experience of hearing the
which the performers sit in silence ambient noises of the concert hall
for the duration (four minutes against which music is usually (which includes instructions for the
and 33 seconds), was inspired played is an enlightening one. performers), and in saying that the
by the idea of silence as a part of Curiously, the duration of the work, piece “may be performed by any
music. Musicians had long used roughly the length of the 78 rpm instrumentalist,” Cage is still allied
silence in music—Beethoven is record, was a direct challenge to the Classical tradition.
reputed to have said that the music to the commodification of music,
was in the silences—but for Cage particularly pop music, which Defining music
this was an engagement with the was a neatly packaged predictable The first performance of 4´33˝ in
Japanese idea of Ma, which product. In publishing the score 1952 opened the doors to further
speculation and experimentalism
into what actually constitutes
music. An extreme example was
written by one of Cage’s students,
La Monte Young, whose 1960 Piano
Piece for David Tudor #1 (the
American pianist and composer
David Tudor had also premiered
4´33˝) gives only the following
instructions: “Bring a bale of hay
and a bucket of water onto the
stage for the piano to eat and drink.
The performer may then feed the
piano or leave it to eat by itself.
If the former, the piece is over after
the piano has been fed. If the latter,
it is over after the piano eats or

An anechoic chamber in Bell
Laboratories, New Jersey, in the 1950s,
is lined with wedge-shaped pieces of
fibre-glass, which was commonly used
in such chambers to absorb echoes.

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