Re: 4'33" by John Cage

[mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>]

Just for info, I can report, many years after the fact, that Silence by John Cage was, and is the only thing I have ever stolen in my life! Coming as it did from my Art College library, when, before Amazon, books were actually pretty hard to find.
Not proud of it, but it has been a seminal book for me, and have read it more times than I have seen "My Cousin Vinnie", I can promise you, thats alot! One of these days Ill buy a new copy and quietly slip it back onto the shelves of Portsmouth College of Art.

Mark

On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 1:08 PM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

On 28/03/2014 10:42, Rick Walker wrote:

On 3/27/2014 6:44 PM, Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers-delight.com wrote:

0'00" by John Cage.

Just for historical accuracy, I believe you are referring to the compostion, 4'33" bt Cage.


Many people, parenthetically,  don't understand what he was attempting in that piece.

Yup, that's how I figure it

I heard that the score calls for opening windows and doors to increase the ambient
sounds filtering into the concert hall.
(not seen such a score however)

It's also true that Cage, ( in "Silence" iirc ) refers to it as his "silent piece".

Maybe he was pragmatic about how the piece caught on.

It's a real shame that a lot of Cage's beautiful music is lost to
the psuedo-intellectual smokescreen which he seems to
have done nothing to disperse.

For anyone unfamiliar, the prepared piano compositions are probably the best place to
start, kind of Eric Satie goes atonal percussion.
( I think they're a Rick fave too?)


andy

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Mark Francombe
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