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

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Glad to discover that last night's broadcast is at 320kbps on the iplayer

I haven't listened yet but I notice that:

John Cage is a figure of central importance to them, especially the work featured in this week's instalment of the Hear and Now 50: Cage's legendary "silent" piece, 4'33" .

[Serial_Apologist]

Glad to discover that last night's broadcast is at 320kbps on the iplayer

I haven't listened yet but I notice that:

It was a very odd performance of the Cage, SC: interspersed with BBC pips to demarcate the work's formal subdivisions - which I was not aware existed. The first two pieces of the programme - the Irish works - were fun; but I felt the rest of the programme was dross.

[Quarky]

4' 33" more often than not makes me cross.

It's not the work itself so much as the outrageous claims that are made about it - I think one of the interviewees stated something to the effect that it was one of the most important works of the 20th Century.

Silence within a musical context obviously is very important. But any raw beginner in Eastern religion meditiation techniques will appreciate the issues involved in silence - that of sounds within the body and mind, and extraneous noises that have to be entertained/ discounted. So I don't find anything novel in Cage's claims, nor those of his followers.

John Cage was clearly a witty intellectual, excellent author and publicist. But the quality of his musical compositions often don't match his other talents.

[MrGongGong]

John Cage was clearly a witty intellectual, excellent author and publicist. But the quality of his musical compositions often don't match his other talents.

it all depends on how you judge the "quality" of the music !
4:33" is one of the most important works of the 20th Century IMV
its often performed badly (i haven't "heard" this version ) and is quite "fragile"
but as an experience it can be wonderful
to compare it to Mahler 5 (for example) is a bit daft as it occupies a different space

[hackneyvi]

I saw 4' 33" performed at QEH a few weeks ago. A man came out, sat down at the piano keyboard, leaned forward with his hands above the keys like the Monty Python organist, sat back, sat forward again, then turned to the audience for applause. Another piece consisted of various objects being scraped in percussive effect.

The pieces seemed - like The Goons or Richard Dimbleby - perhaps once brilliant, apparantly influential but in themselves so ancient and impertinent as to be meaningless. From what I've seen and heard of it, Cage's music seems trivial and I'm inclined now to avoid it in future.

[John Skelton]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epBkVgfoXNk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHFzu-X6Ruw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SmXNDYlNJM

[John Skelton]

If you don't like 4:33", Panjandrum, Cage wrote much other music. Why don't you try some of that? You might enjoy it .

[Panjandrum]

If you don't like 4:33", Panjandrum, Cage wrote much other music. Why don't you try some of that? You might enjoy it .

Thanks. It was the exaggerated claims for the importance of 4'33" than the entirety of Cage's oeuvre I was attacking.

[John Skelton]

I think 4'33" is important in that it foregrounds something that is important or essential in all music yet, to mix senses, generally invisible, the silence that music emerges from, the silence that surrounds music, and the silence that follows it. Or the silence that isn't ever Silence, but is sound that we blank out, or deny, or hear subliminally. I think it has a continued importance in an age where silence is becoming almost prohibited (or it is becoming more and more difficult to hear the silence that isn't Silence, for noise-information).

I also think it reinstates something that belonged especially to older music and to older 'non-classical' music: the interaction or intimacy of music and the space where the music is heard (I think particularly of the different performing spaces for medieval music).

Whether that's pompous or not I don't know, but it's what I have to offer!

[french frank]

I've moved the comedy exchanges to the thread 'What's it all about, then? - J Cage' on Platform 3.

[Lateralthinking1]

I think it is rather significant because it challenges an individual's relationship with silence.

One can listen to most music attentively or have it on in the background. By contrast, silence is something that we always have on in the background. When we shut up for a minute and say we are going to listen to silence, we are actually listening out for whatever is the sound that breaks it, however slight. As for momentary silence, well, this is understood to be used to good effect in music or drama or conversation. Arguably, it is in essence an alternative sound. Not silence at all.

What Cage does surely is to lure us into listening to a slice of permanent silence as if it were sound. Because this is done over a reasonably lengthy period, we may become bored but in turning away from it, our senses are then attuned to the real silence around us. Not the temporary pause for dramatic effect but the stuff that is always with us even when there are others in the vicinity. In one sense an aura. The closest companion anyone can have and bizarrely the most overlooked.

But who or what is it? That is what he gets us to ask.

[Bryn]

I've moved the comedy exchanges to the thread 'What's it all about, then? - J Cage' on Platform 3.

Nothing comedic about the points re. bad performances or Cage's Happy New Ears!, frenchie. Both were essentially salient to this very discussion. Re. the latter, see page 30 et seq in Cage's A Year from Monday:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Monday-Lectures-Writings/dp/0714525413

[Panjandrum]

I think it is rather significant because it challenges an individual's relationship with silence.

I don't deny its significance as a concept, or its influence on other composers. Maybe some out there need(ed) their attention to be drawn to silence by an arbitrary time period to be made aware of this. However, pace the thought police, its time to consign this sacred cow to the footnotes of musical history.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, I have come in at this late so I may be at odd angles. To move my stated perspective along a bit, this. Consider the possible range of reactions. Some laugh at it. Some dismiss it with disdain. Some have a dig at those who see it as having worth. Some say it has worth and give reasons. The question here is "what is "it"?" Before I deal with this point, I will add in these few random words so that each paragraph has four lines and it looks more constructed.

So to the dealing. In terms of musical appreciation, I would argue that "it" is the presentation of a situation. One in which the listener has the expectation of being given some structure of sound. One about which crucially we are urged to believe at least partially on account of formatting. One which relies for any conviction to be carried on the formatting alone. What is it to be? Belief or suspension? It teases out what we really all know already. People will vary on that axis.

But then this goes deeper doesn't it? What do the reactions reveal about a person's outlook onto the broader canvas? Here one might ask what percentage of our lives is actually populated with sound, particularly with human sound, and what isn't? My answer is that it must be 99.99% of our environment that is silence, however environment through life is defined. Yes. Sound is like a series of drops in a silent ocean. Of course, it seems precisely the reverse.

And that 99.99% clearly isn't others - verbally, musically, when clomping about - so it must be us. And yet it isn't us as we know it. It is us in the absence of others' sounds with a feeling that such a thing is uncanny. How bizarre is the latter feeling when actually that condition should be the last thing that is a stranger. We live with it all of the time, virtually. So the reaction is not to it but ourselves. No? In a wholly literal sense, I find it a very interesting and informative project.

[Bryn]

I've moved the comedy exchanges to the thread 'What's it all about, then? - J Cage' on Platform 3.

Well, if the diktat is that we must skip between two threads to follow the discussion, here, at least , is a link to the other thread:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?3691-What-s-it-all-about-then-J-Cage&p=98026#post98026