Hear and Now 5/11/11 Cut and Splice 2011

[hackneyvi]

As a bit of a sceptic about the piece in question, can I ask: is it possible to have an aesthetically bad performance of 4' 33"? You can certainly have technically bad ones, eg ones which last 4' 32" or 4' 34", but is it possible to say that some performances are better or worse than others on artistic grounds? If so, what makes them that way?

Seconded.

[Bryn]

I suggest that the pair of you read through this and the thread split form it by french frank, I responded to this issue a couple of days ago with respect to a couple of recording of he work issued on CD. In general a good performance, aesthetically, would be one which observed both the letter and spirit of the score.

[Quarky]

" it has a metronome mark, bars,?treble and bass clefs and a time signature
Far more traditonal than I would have thought"

It's not meant to be performed on a prepared piano, then?

[Bryn]

It's not meant not to be performed on a prepared piano. During Radio 3's "Cage Uncaged" weekend at the Barbican few years ago it was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It is quite possible that the performance has been loaded up to YouTube. I have not checked.

Now checked and it is:

http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=841006

Usual numbskull comments are to be found there too.

[Chris Newman]

Here it is, Bryn and Oddball:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY7UK-6aaNA

[hedgehog]

@hackneyvi

If you are very new to cage I would suggest easing in with some of the earlier works - some of the prepared piano stuff: Bacchanale, root of an unfocus,in the name of the holocaust, 3 Dances for two prepared pianos or 16 dances. Sonatas and Interludes, too but really try listen to some early stuff late 1930's - 1940's !or constructions in metal Then perhaps Music of Changes.

I get your point about 4:33" being almost exclusively the only thing that is widely spread about Cage (that is my main grievance) and that says to me more in the first place about lazy programmers, radio presenters, journalists and etc than the "general audience for music".

[Bryn]

Re. early Cage, may I also mention The Seasons (both the piano and the orchestra versions) and String Quartet in Four Parts. Two works of considerable beauty, and both relating to the four seasons of the year.

In late life Cage's 'number pieces' reflected his breaking through the wall of harmony he had been banging his head against since his days as a private student of Arnold Schoenberg.

[hackneyvi]

Re. early Cage, may I also mention The Seasons (both the piano and the orchestra versions) and String Quartet in Four Parts. Two works of considerable beauty, and both relating to the four seasons of the year.

In late life Cage's ;number pieces' reflected his breaking through the wall of harmony he had been banging his head against since his days as a private student of Arnold Schoenberg.

@hackneyvi

If you are very new to cage I would suggest easing in with some of the earlier works - some of the prepared piano stuff: Bacchanale, root of an unfocus,in the name of the holocaust, 3 Dances for two prepared pianos or 16 dances. Sonatas and Interludes, too but really try listen to some early stuff late 1930's - 1940's !or constructions in metal Then perhaps Music of Changes.

I get your point about 4:33" being almost exclusively the only thing that is widely spread about Cage (that is my main grievance) and that says to me more in the first place about lazy programmers, radio presenters, journalists and etc than the "general audience for music".

I have what I hope is good news ... which is that Spotify indeed have a recording of Three Constructions, divided by 2 songs - A Flower & Forever and Sunsmell.

I'd recommend the hypnotic gentleness of the performance of A Flower to anyone. Enjoy her voice as I do, it seems the performance by Jay Claton may not be what Cage himself would have liked since she does sing with some vibrato.

All 3 of the Constructions are of interest - though I think the Third is more interesting for its syncopating delicacy, the first for its vigour and the originality of some of its sounds. These two both have moments which remind me of 50s sci-fi scores (various BBC Radiophonics in the First and the grumbling howls and yawns of Forbidden Planet, among them).

None of the metal pieces are desert island discs for me but I enjoy them all.

[Serial_Apologist]

It seems to me that what you're suggesting is that Cage is one in the series of attempts to 'start music again' - Schoenberg, Boulez and Cage all attempt this, don't they?

I can make sense of Cage's ambition to 'cleanse' music of its associations if he feels that music is a culture which determines many of its own outcomes. But what outcomes does he hope for from music that is 'liberated'?

I think where I struggle is with the sense of this cleansing and the subsequent music being such an intellectual effort, that the force producing it is a form of puritanism that's quite brutal, essentially antagonisitic, even where it smiles.

Schoenberg did indeed write that he felt that he had "broken the bonds of a bygone aesthetic" in the composition of the Hanging Gardens songs of 1908 - his first virtually completely atonal work. Later on he described his 12-tone music as an attempt to rejuvenate the Bach > Beethoven > Wagner > Brahms continuum he felt himself as part of; and it was this tradition that Boulez in particular criticised him for at the end of the 1940s: namely, by using forms pertinent to and evolved within diatonic music in no longer diatonic contexts, for not following through the implications of his own revolution.

The post WW2 avant-garde initially encouraged by Messiaen's piece "Mode de valeurs et d'intensites" felt the whole of the European aesthetic implicitly tarnished by association with (or non-disassociation from) stalinism, fascism and war; Boulez (and others at the time) considered serialism the bedrock of a new aesthetic of abstraction - one purified by mathematical distancing of tarnished subjectivism - and, by extending its organisational aegis beyond the melodic/harmonic parameter of musical structure to as many parameters as could be considered for inclusion, an integrative replacement system for tonality.

So, in a sense, Cage, while critical of the serialists' urge to create a music predetermined down to the smallest details, and seeing it, contrary to the intentions of its makers, as the very epitome of control freakery, was effectively pursuing a very similar "spiritual" aim of distancing creator from creation. Cage - who to answer (I hope) your question, was less concerned with "outcomes" than conditions conducive to awareness in the Raja Yogic sense - stuck very much to his post-1950 vision in this respect, and possibly had some influence, direct or indirect, on forcing the European total serialists to see the contradictions and limitations in their objective, and thus allow the light of spontaneity and inspiration to re-illuminate the creative process.

Yes, some of the works composed within the serial idiom could be considered brutal in idiom, though I'd argue it's partly a question of accustoming oneself to atonal music in the first place, which is more than a matter of unresolved cadences; for me there are many passages of great and mysterious beauty in, for example, Stockhausen's "Gesang der Jungelinge" and "Kontakte", Nono's "Incontri", Boulez's "Figures, Doubles, Prismes", and Gerhardt's Fourth Symphony, which would have not been possible without the "lliberation" of musical idiom paradoxically attained by serial means.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I was very disappointed that we didn't get Cage's 4' 33" on Saturday's programme - instead they broadcast something called 2' 52"

At my house this piece included the sounds of a central heating boiler and a cat drinking water from a bowl (I was listening on headphones in the kitchen).

I particularly liked Michael Pisaro's melody, silence, I'll certainly be listening to that again.

Having the programme at 320 kbps made it much more enjoyable to listen to - including 2' 52"!

[amateur51]

I have what I hope is good news ... which is that Spotify indeed have a recording of Three Constructions, divided by 2 songs - A Flower & Forever and Sunsmell.

I'd recommend the hypnotic gentleness of the performance of A Flower to anyone. Enjoy her voice as I do, it seems the performance by Jay Claton may not be what Cage himself would have liked since she does sing with some vibrato.

All 3 of the Constructions are of interest - though I think the Third is more interesting for its syncopating delicacy, the first for its vigour and the originality of some of its sounds. These two both have moments which remind me of 50s sci-fi scores (various BBC Radiophonics in the First and the grumbling howls and yawns of Forbidden Planet, among them).

None of the metal pieces are desert island discs for me but I enjoy them all.

I always enjoy your reports about music you've heard, hackneyvi! Innocent ears indeed and all the better for that - thanks for such honest responses

[MrGongGong]

As a bit of a sceptic about the piece in question, can I ask: is it possible to have an aesthetically bad performance of 4' 33"? You can certainly have technically bad ones, eg ones which last 4' 32" or 4' 34", but is it possible to say that some performances are better or worse than others on artistic grounds? If so, what makes them that way?

IMV performances which have been less successful have been those that treat the work as a piece of theatre. Musicians are notoriously bad at being "actors" so when I've seen performances of 4:33" that have over enthusiastic "theatrics" then I cringe. I've been at some very beautiful performances where the invitation to listen that the piece contains has resulted in a wonderful "held" sequence of "silences" with no comedy piano lid nonsense

[Quarky]

Thanks Chris and Bryn.

Seem to be edging closer to the "truth" in this work , if truth there be.

So we are talking about silence in a musical context, and more particularly in a performance. It seems to me that the work should really be experienced in a concert hall, and that may be the BBC was in error in broadcasting a performance. How ridiculous! How is one to distinguish between this esteemed work and just plain old silence?

In any event, I see th at it was performed at the proms Saturday 24 July 1999, 3:00PM
John Cage 4' 33 Konnie Huq piano Simon Thomas presenter

Thought it had been performed just a couple of years ago however. May be we could have a Proms performance in 2012?

[MrGongGong]

As this thread has been split
I feel that this post on the H&N thread is maybe pertinent ?
it is in response to the question of : is it possible to have an aesthetically bad performance of 4' 33"?



IMV performances which have been less successful have been those that treat the work as a piece of theatre. Musicians are notoriously bad at being "actors" so when I've seen performances of 4:33" that have over enthusiastic "theatrics" then I cringe. I've been at some very beautiful performances where the invitation to listen that the piece contains has resulted in a wonderful "held" sequence of "silences" with no comedy piano lid nonsense

[french frank]

I don't think anyone's drawn attention to Robert Worby's blog on the radio realisation of 2'52".