Music of Silent
It was an ordinary night in 1952, but perhaps not for the audience at Maverick Concert Hall. Everything was in perfect harmony until the host invited pianist David Tudor on stage to perform John Cage’s piece 4’ 33”. As every performer does, Tudor sat down at the piano and put the sheet music on the piano stand. However, he began to perform without playing a note, started a stopwatch, and closed the lid. After 30 seconds of silence, Tudor reset the stopwatch and timed another two minutes, 23 seconds of silence, then another one minute, 40 seconds of silence. This music without notes challenged the audience’s definition of music, and also broke the shell of postmodern music. Even though the classical-music dominated world viewed 4’ 33” with skepticism and doubt since it was not attuned to the potential of this piece, Susan Sontag understood Cage and 4’ 33’’ so much with arguments in her essay “Against Interpretation”. Despite Cage’s 4’ 33’’ being contrary to many people’s traditional aesthetic values, its revolutionary expression, sensory experience, and context against consumerism had profoundly influenced the public’s interpretation of music.
Unlike the traditional music expression, 4’ 33’’ with its revolutionary music performance altered people’s perception of music. Western music cultures, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, attributed their virtuosity to three factors: content, purpose, and technique. To elaborate, people expected to see entertaining, narrative music with incredible technical skills. Moreover, music served several concomitant functions at that time. For example, people used music to express cultural and political identity, to listen and perform, and to create drama, movement, and entertainment. In this regard, 4′ 33” significantly challenged the musical virtuosity of the audience with its non-narrative, non-purposive, and non-figurative concepts. Around music virtuosity, people habitually initiated thousands of comments, interpretation, and critiques on the music work. While Cage protested the music virtuosity in a completely silent but sound way since no comments can be made upon an non-figurative and non-purposive work, he successfully extended the potential of sound to infinity. Sontag insightfully asserts in her essay, “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all”(10). What Sontag states provides 4’ 33’’ with great support and makes the creation of the piece reasonable. By stripping away his own understanding as a composer, Cage fostered an environment where art could adapt to itself. Hence, audiences could enjoy the essence of music when they viewed music works without any musical virtuosity.
By focusing on the internal process of music, 4’33 was able to not only modify the listeners’ perception of the music, but also refresh their sensory experience of the music. In this new concept that Cage defined, we pay attention to more than just hearing music, but also feeling it and other senses. Sontag responds to the importance of recuperating our senses in “Against Interpretation” since they have been heavily suppressed due to “sheer multiplication of works of art available” and “conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment”(9). She points out that people’s aesthetics have become numb as the trend makes music repetitive and monotonous. In spite of this, Cage solidified himself to make 4’ 33’’ unique and provided a solution to the issue that Sontag addressed. He responded to the heated debate about 4 ’33 in an interview, “what really pleases me in that silent piece is that it can be played any time, but only comes alive when you play it. And each time you do, it is an experience of being very, very much alive”. 4’33 becomes a brand new piece of music each time listeners change their circumstances. The first time I heard it was on the lawn under my dorm building, when I heard the rustle of leaves, the chirping of birds, and the rhythmic rustle made by the leaps of squirrels. However, when I listened to it again in the library, I heard keyboard tapping, page turning, footsteps, and whispers. What makes 4′ 33” more compelling is that it is an experience that enhances the audience’s sensory experience through the engagement of all aspects of their senses. The music of silence succeeded in opening all the senses, including the smell of grass, the view of autumn scenery, the feel of sunlight, the sound of rustling leaves, and the touch of the soil. All around me was part of the sensory experience, and everything around it was 4’33. As a result, this contentless performance provides a refreshing sensory experience to the audience through its internal process that has the capability to expand into infinity.
In addition to breaking the boundaries of music, 4’33 also acted as a protest against consumerism. In 2004, angry listeners rehearsed some of the stock complaints they planned to make: “Absolutely ridiculous . . . clearly a gimmick . . . patronizing and disturbing . . . is this how our license fee money is being used?” The anger came from the context of consumerism, which manipulates the content of art for centuries. Art reflecting current cultural values in a consumer-driven context is intrinsically socially relevant, making comments about our contemporary world. Sontag claims that “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable”(5). Sontag is precisely right here in stating that people are accustomed to interpretation and that they will be extraordinarily offended when paying for a work that goes against interpretation. Due to the inherent connection between music virtuosity and consumerism, people will feel more disoriented when they hear music undefined like 4′ 33″ because they consider it not worth paying for. During the consumerism-dominated world of the 1960s, Cage bravely challenged the definition of art with the groundbreaking 4′ 33″ piece.
Obviously, Mr. Cage played a significant role in the development of the music industry. A wide variety of branches of music avant-garde were thrown open by him, including Minimalism, performance art, and much more. Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Frederic Rzewski, all of whom have a very different compositional style from Mr. Cage, have all cited him as a lighthouse that helped illuminate their own tracks as they emerged with their own compositions. This piece of music, as well as minimalist music, is an ideal place to escape from the commotion of city life and find a moment of peace in the middle of the chaos, allowing listeners to focus on their own thoughts. The more we focus on the form of music rather than the content, the more stimulating aspects we can discover than the conventional virtuosity of the instrument. Similarly, we should apply the same principle and inspiration to our daily lives. When our senses become dull due to routines and routine routines, it is important to refresh them with time spent on activities that are not part of our routine.
Work Cited
Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. Picador, 1966, pp 1-10.
Hermes, Will. “The Story of ‘4’33’’.” NPR, NPR, 8 May 2000, www.npr.org/2000/05/08/1073885/4-33.
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