John Cage - Listening Report

 

John Cage (1912-1992) is an US American componist and one of the most influential componists of the 20th century. Cage describes music as “a purposeful purposelessness” or “purposeless play” (1961), meaning that there is an absence of themes and typical norms. The focus is just on the activity of tones and silence, which represents life. According to Cage, there is no life with absolute silence because tones are an indicator for life. Complete silence can only correlate with the absence of life. Thus, Cage’s aim with his plays is to represent life.

An example for this approach is “4’33” by John Cage.”4’33” is a 4 minutes and 33 seconds long play by John Cage that, at first sight, seems to represent silence because nobody from the orchestra is playing their instruments. However, Cage’s definition shows that there is never silence. The play was full of accidental sounds, such as people talking, movement, people breathing and many more. All these different sounds have made the 4’33 play unique because none of the sounds are predictable, just like life itself.

 

Another characteristic approach of Cage is the idea of “contingency”. Cage defines contingency as “improvisation using elements in which there is a discontinuity between cause and effect”, which can be seen in the play “inlets” (1977).

Inlets consists of three performers simultaneously playing seashells filled with water and one performer playing a shell in circular breathing and with the sound of fire. All sounds that are created are captured and intensified by a microphone.

The shells have varying sizes and forms and therefore create different and individual sounds. Shaking and turning the seashells with different intensity and speed creates different sound intensities. The play ends by one performer breathing out deeply into a seashell, creating a very long, intensive, and deep sound, similar to a trumpet or horn. The water filled shells create deep and mysterious cave sounds that also remind of dripping water in an abandoned place.

For me, this play was very interesting because of the unique instruments. I have never heard a play before that used seashells as its main instrument or even knew that it is possible to create these kinds of sounds with seashells. In my opinion, the

 

 

sounds of “Inlets” have a movie character because of their similarity to sounds in mysterious caves and water dripping scenes. It is fascinating to see that the performers are able to create such a harmonious play without using typical instruments.