Let's start with the person behind this unique performance: John Cage. A student of Arnold Schoenberg, who described himself as an inventor of sounds and always emphasized that experimentation was particularly important when it comes to music.
His
definition of music was always that all “sounds heard are music” and it doesn’t
need to be a certain structure or harmony. The world is full of sounds, it only
needs an audience to receive those and listen to them.
“There is no such thing as
silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.” - John Cage
John
Cage also always draws comparisons to nature in his pieces, because everything
that happens in nature, all sounds, whether random or not, result in music
according to his view. Which is why, in
another piece, he wanted the composer to play a piece of wood. He should
interpret the annual rings as notes and play the piece of wood. Or another comparison is also that nature is
constantly changing, evolving and never standing still. This comparison of constant
change, he wants to convey with his pieces as well. To show us that things that seem very tiny or
inconspicuous and unimportant, like the beat of a butterfly's wings, can
nevertheless have a great impact. The flap of a butterfly's wings that seems so
inconspicuous, but by all appearances can cause a tornado. This is the kind of
comparison John Cage wants to achieve with his piece. The supposed silence in
the piece is not what matters to him here, it is about the listeners, the
audience. As he said, sounds are created everywhere and as soon as these are
heard, music is created according to his definition. Because if we look or
rather listen more closely at the performance of 4'33 we will perceive many
sounds. Raindrops pattering on the roof and all the noises made by the
audience, because some of them didn't know what was going on and started
talking to each other, leaving the hall or other noises that were made during
the performance. Exactly these background noises were the main part of the
piece, the music in the sense of John Cage. Since at the same time there were
also people present who perceived all these sounds and which, just like in
Nature or many other pieces by Cage, had no real structure.
Therefore
John Cage initiated the discussion about sounds as music with his
compositions.
He
shows us that we can change and reinterpret certain concepts and think further
than just what the traditional systems
have taught us. Because our mind is usually trained to combine music with
sounds that are in harmony with each other, which is not the case with John
Cage. For him, music is not about perfection or to bring order out of chaos,
but rather to be more open and to enjoy sounds that arise unintentionally in
situations, as in 4'33, and to see them as music.
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