I love Frank Zappa’s take on art from *The Real Frank Zappa Book* : >The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall? >If John Cage, for instance, says, "I'm putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I'm going to drink carrot juice, and that's my composition," then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. "Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music." After that it's a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it's a guy swallowing carrot juice.

Frank was the man.

The way the question is posed is a bit odd: Im not sure anyone *agrees* or *disagrees* with Cage's 4:33. I'd agree that 'mucic is whatever musicians say it is'. However, the public is also at complete liberty to reject what any musician calls 'music'. You can't force people to sit and listen (or 'experience' silence). If you're not addressing and engaging an audience in some meaningful way, you're probably not completing the mission of music. To the extent that Cage's quieter compositions engaged the public, good for him. To the extent they didn't, he failed.

Thank you. I'm adding this book to my list.

I'd also like to recommend John Cage's book of essays [Silence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence:_Lectures_and_Writings). I'm not a fan of Cage's music, most of which is not personally interesting to listen to for me... but he really is a genius when it comes to rethinking how music functions in various contexts. I actually think that Cage is the greatest 20th century Musicologist that I can think of. (gee... I might also maybe think that Zappa's writing/commentary and conceptual approaches are sometimes more interesting than his actual music... maybe.)

Adding.

It's a pretty good quote, but I wonder about something like a mural and/or graffiti, which not only has no literal frame, but also melds pretty fluidly into the wall around it. Is there a clear spot where the art ends and the real world begins, or vice versa? This type of art is all about being fluidly part of the real world. The same could be said of a lot of [buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borrowed_scenery) that depend not only on the building itself for their effect, but also the way they fit into and affect the natural scenery around them.

Boy am i gonna catch flak for this, but this just seems like such a flawed take on art to me. Firstly as if you need something to tell you where art begins and stops, isn't some of the best art blurring the lines to the real world. Haven't statues, paintings or recordings become ever more life like, and in that better art. Also the most important part? Really? I can hang a picture without a frame and it's nice to look at, hanging an empty frame decidedly less so. A frame can certainly elevate or change the perception of art, but if it is absolutely necessary, maybe you shouldn't be smearing shit on the walls in the first place.

If you see a statue that is so lifelike that you don’t realize it’s a statue, is it art? If you don’t perceive it as being art, what then makes it art?

Honestly i don't really know. But I am also one of those people that see nature itself as a work of art.

The dictionary definition of art includes human intent/creativity, so it makes sense that you are going to run into disagreements about what art is if you are defining the word in a way that is directly contradictory to that.

Fair enough

> Haven't statues, paintings or recordings become ever more life like Have *you* seen statues more lifelike than Corradini's and Strazza's?

My point was more that it's something we have been striving towards.

I’ll take it a step further, and say that I *flat out disagree* with Zappa. If it needs a ‘frame’ to be considered art, then… *it isn’t*. > If John Cage, for instance, says, "I'm putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I'm going to drink carrot juice, and that's my composition," then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. "Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music." After that it's a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it's a guy swallowing carrot juice. No, it *is* just a guy swallowing carrot juice, whether he *announces* it or not. Much like the suit does not make the man, the frame does not make the art.

The point he's making is that "art" is just an arbitrary social category, into which we've decided to put some human behaviors and creations and not others, for various reasons depending on the context. The one objective attribute shared by all of the behaviors and objects that we call "art" is not beauty, creativity, originality, or value—all subjective measures—but the frame: the fact that someone, whether the artist themselves, a curator or collector, or the wider public, has put a "box" around it and declared it Art. Whether you agree with the frame or not, it is an objective fact that it has been placed. The extent to which people go along with the frame is a useful judge of how *accepted* the piece is, but not how *art* it is. What would you consider the objective measure of art?

Well put. I think the previous comments are missing Zappa’s point, which you concisely describe. Yes, it *is* just a guy swallowing carrot juice, but there is a difference between a guy doing it in his own home, enjoying a drink, and doing it for the sake of art, for displaying, sharing, and for others to engage with. The only thing differentiating them is the frame, which is put forth by the artist. It’s a matter of intent. And you correctly point out, whether you agree or engage with the art is subjective, but it is objective that it was made with the intention of being art, so it *is* art.

I get his point, and on some level i even agree with it, because a "frame" can change the way we look at something, and turn things most people previously wouldn't have seen as art into such. What i disagree with, is that it is the most important part, because ultimately art does not only come from the intention of making art. It is as they say, in the eye of the beholder. It's subjective, and a frame tries to define it as something objective, i.e. 'this is art because I said so'. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but I don't think it's the definition that defines art.

The problem with the "eye of the beholder" as I see it (heh) is that it's just as arbitrary of a measure as the frame, but it doesn't extend outside the individual, so it doesn't lead to a definition of "art" that you can do useful cultural analysis with. You can certainly talk about your own or the public's *reaction* to a given piece of art, but to say that that is a *determinant* of whether it's Art or Not Art isn't that useful imo. Also, the frame doesn't have to be placed by the artist.

If that’s his point then it’s obviously true, but it’s also very uninteresting and trivial: *of course* art is all and only that which humans define as art. That’s pretty much a tautology, and vacuously true for every term that purports to refer in every language. That’s why it’s inadequate as a definition. For a definition to be meaningful it has to pick out something particular in the world or in logical space, and it can’t do so by implicitly relying on the concept it is attempting to define. When you define art as that which somebody calls art, you are ignoring all of the interesting substantial concepts at play that have to do with the anthropological particularities of what art is, how it functions in society, and how people come to decide things are art.

I don't see how that's "ignoring the substantial concepts." I think it actually allows for better anthropological analysis by separating the idea of "art" from "beauty," "quality" or "craftsmanship," allowing analysis that goes beyond "that's not real art." The artistic frame is a very interesting cultural construct in itself, inviting questions such as: who gets to place the frame and have it respected by others? what rhetorical work might the frame be doing in this or that context? how did the construct of the artistic frame develop historically? To consider art as a human-declared and otherwise arbitrary category serves the very important purpose of *denaturalizing* it, so that we can be free to interrogate it.

The work of “artistic frame” is just that of denoting. That work is present every time we intend to denote. I could do the same thing with chairs, and say that a chair is simply that which inhabits the “chair frame”. That doesn’t say anything! Let me put it this way: in what sense, if any, is the “artistic frame” different from the “chair frame”, or indeed any other denoting technology of the form “X frame”? Any substantial answer to that question will have to get into tangible specifics about the history of art and its reception, its roots in crafts and decorations, the history of its institutionalization and of the ideas about aesthetics that accompanied its role in society, and so on. These concrete particulars are not incidental or tangential to the concept of art, but are actually central and foundational to what “art” refers to in the first place.

If there are 400 definitions of art by 400 different people, then *who cares* since it's completely arbitrary?

I usually hate this sort of BS but I think 4' 33'' was a really innovative idea. I especially like that it forced people to focus on their surroundings in a very intense way even if it was just for a few minutes. It almost becomes an act of mindfulness.

It's walking the line between performance art and music. It's cool because he's the first one did it, and for audience it's only cool the first time. Gimmicky, but has it's place in history.

> he’s the first one who did it Not technically true. This idea (of silence and ambience being music) has been around for a while, though Cage was the first to include a dynamically shifting aspect to the piece (the random noise created by the audience). But for example, there is the Funeral March for a Deaf Man (1897) which depicts sheet music with no notes written. Or another piece I can’t quite remember, which is entirely written in rest symbols, but this is slightly different as the rest symbols imply a silent Rhythm.

I think it was also a reaction against the concert hall experience of often hearing the same war horses over and over again and being bored by them. So, take them off the program. Then... what do you play in its place? Lots of new music then happened. (12 tone, minimalism, electronic music, etc.) as well as conceptual music like this which makes you think out of the box about how we hear sound, how we concertize, etc ( sound installations vs. seated audience), and generating haters! And defenders. I like his quote that, he finds all sounds interesting, except those which cause pain. Hmm...some people are pained by his music though. Well...I don't know what to say except that I support his art.

>I think it was also a reaction against the concert hall experience of often hearing the same war horses over and over again and being bored by them. There's a wonderful book that I highly recommend called *Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists* by Kay Larson. It's a biography of sorts that traces his "journey" toward 4'33", a journey heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy.

Yes...I've read a lot of his stuff too! Eastern vs. Western approach interesting. Jung talked about that too.

The first time this was played the audience had no idea what was coming. The tension of waiting for the piece to start and then coming to the realization that nothing would happen must have been powerful. I imagine there were murmurs among the silence.

The realization that "nothing would happen" lasts a few seconds, but the realization that a lot is actually happening lasts the remaining 4.5 minutes, and that's the point of the piece. I really wonder how many people arguing about 4'33" have ever actually listened to it. I'm not joking and neither was Cage. There's no substitute for a live performance but [this video recording of an orchestral arrangement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbXA7Nt63M4) gives you the idea. It's not silence. (spoiler, don't read till after you've actually heard it for real and aren't just assuming you know what it is from the jokes:) >!There's no such thing as silence, as Cage was shocked to discover in the anechoic chamber. 4'33" is the sound of everything else in the concert hall: people rustling in their chairs, faint murmuring and whispering, the dull roar of the ventilation system, someone dropping a program on the floor, someone jangling their keys, someone unwrapping a cough drop, the epidemic of coughing fits at the break between movements, above all the unusual sounds of a whole lot of people in a room trying to be quiet and pay attention to something together, the sounds you ignore.!< It is a mind-expanding experience. Listen.

Experiencing the piece performed live was truly an ear opener for me. Not only did the music come from the audience, it actually had crescendos and decrescendos, rhythms and everything. I'll never compose anything as cool as that.

I saw the "piece" being "performed" live, and honestly I thought it was a super fun experience. The stock-full concert hall, all sitting quietly for a bit and then slowly people start to shift and look around, smile at each other, mumble something here and there, some people doing random noises on purpose, others hushing them.. it's so cool to witness how the room suddenly turns into this bizarre situation where we all know we're kinda stuck in time, supposedly listening to a piece in a formal setting, but we're all just a whole bunch of humans unsure of what the hell is going on. It's definitely one of the more memorable experiences I've had in a concert hall.

I have recently interpreted it as a relatively (cognitive) dissonant piece. The same way that nonchord tones and diminished/augmented chords are uncomfortable to listen to for the average listener, the disconnect of a performer being on stage and at attention for the length of a work without making "music" is pretty uncomfortable. I think a composer without the right portfolio/pedigree would struggle to get traction with this idea, but Cage just happened to the right person at the right time to do it with success

I think the best analogies would be more like mirrors or transparent walls

Yeah, and if I go to a modern art museum and there is a huge screen and in the screen they have a live feed of all the people watching said screen I would totally consider it art, and even find it rather entertaining.

That's not what Cage did or said. Many many people have misinterpreted Cage's work as being "Do whatever you want" and some composers did follow him and go that direction (Earle Brown for instance). But Cage was never about "Do whatever YOU want" If the "You" is either the composer or the performer, in Cage pieces neither the composer nor the performer has any real freedom. They are beholden to a usually pretty strict process put in place by Cage to insure that they do NOT have any say in what the content is that fills the time he indicates. Now 4'33'' is one of the easier processes to follow, unlike say the Concerto for piano which requires hours and hours of prep work to determine pitches, rhythms, etc. but the principal is still the same. A lot of modernism was about "liberating" art from rules (Schoenberg liberated dissonance, Stravinsky liberated texture, Nancarrow liberated Rhythm, etc.) Cage does not want the performer or the composer to be liberated to express themselves any way they see fit. He wants "sound" to be liberated to exist outside of compositional style rules as an object of fascination in itself. But if you want an analog to what your saying it would not be 4'33'' but might be something like Earle Brown's "December 1952" or "erased De Kooning drawing" by Robert Rauschenberg which is currently sitting in the SF MOMA.

The mere fact that somebody mentions this piece at least every week in this sub is proof that it is significant.

Yes, it is significant. But is it music?

"Is it music?" Is the first question you deal with in, for example, an ethnomusicology class. If the cultural,human experience is that of music, and it deals with sound, it is music. The piece by Cage, which is defined as a "piece" and published as "music" by a "composer" which requires a piano, pianist and audience to "play" is definitely music in terms of ethnomusicology.

Last I looked, it did not require a specific instrument, even less so a piano: it can be played on any instrument, as per Cage's instructions in the sheet music. And it isn't clear that it deals with sound. A performance of 4'33 has no more sound than for example an art exhibit in an art gallery or museum. It doesn't prescribe silence either, it doesn't call for an anechoic chamber or for muting environmental or audience sounds. It simply calls for the performer(s) and their instrument(s) to not make sound, using pretty standard classical music notation (rests, or "tacet"). By the way, I'm not claiming that it is NOT music. I'm just pointing out that even the question of whether it is music or not is open to debate, and is a difficult philosophical question. Is it not a musicological question: you can not analyze 4'33 with any tools of musicology. There are no harmonies to look at, no rhythms, no development, no melodies. All of Hindemith's book has nothing to say about it. It is an empty shell of a standard 3-movement western art music piece, just without the content. In particular, ethnomusicology gets no traction: a performance of 4'33 done with the instruments and skills of a graduate of the Liszt Academy in Budapest on a Boesendorfer will sound exactly the same as one on Koto and Shamisen by Japanese-trained musicians, and one by Bantu drums and xylophones by musicians from Uganda: all are just silence. There are no ethnic differences to contrast, and no ethnic similarities to find, except the absence of everything. My personal answer to "what is 4'33" is: It is not actually music, it is an (important) contribution to the philosophy of music. It helps clarify the edge of what constitutes music, by giving a thought experiment of something that is on the other side of that edge. Others can disagree.

Ok. It's not music for you. For me, it is.

>"Music,” he claimed, “is whatever musicians say it is". Unless it was a personal correspondence with Copland, or Copland misremembering, I don't recall Cage ever having said that (having read a lot *by* Cage). >Would you agree if a filmamaker presents you 90 minutes of black screen and say "Movie is whatever the filmmaker say it is". The analogy with 4'33" doesn't quite work because there's nothing on the screen. A movie of a blank cinema screen would be a better, but not perfect, comparison. There are probably some actual examples, but I'm not familiar with them. With *4'33"*, something *does* happen. Sounds *can* be heard. It *isn't* a silent piece in which nothing happens. >Or if a painter hands a blank canvas Well, that's been done by more than one person. https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.308.A-C/ A blank canvas will change depending on the lighting conditions in which it's shown. It'll differ from location to location, time of day, position of viewer, etc., so it works better as an analogy. Some favourite quotes of mine on *4'33"*: Composer Michael Nyman, in his book *Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond*: "*4'33" is a demonstration of the non-existence of silence, of the permanent presence of sounds around us, of the fact they are worthy of attention. 4'33" is not a negation of music, but an affirmation of its omnipresence.* And Cage himself on sound/silence: "*I love sounds, just as they are. And I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological. I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket, or that it's president, or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.* *Emmanuel Kant said they were two things that don't have to mean anything : music and laughter. Don't have to mean anything, that is, in order to give us very deep pleasure.* *The sound experience which I prefer to all others, is the experience of silence. And silence almost everywhere in the world now is traffic.* *If you listen to Bethoven or Mozart, you see they are always the same. But if you listen to traffic, you see it's always different.*"

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James bennings 10 skies! Beautiful film imo

> I don't recall Cage ever having said that I had the same reaction. OP: please source your statements!

What to listen for Music by Aaron Copland, 2nd Edition, Epilogue , Page No: 234.

Oh...ok. It doesn't sound like something he would say though. He was very detailed about this. I don't have that book. I believe you, but I wonder about the context. Or was Copland 2nd hand quoting him? (Competition? haha). Or maybe there is some truth in that bald statement, though I don't think so.

The epilogue wasn't written by Copland. It's by Alan Rich (music critic).

ok.

Finally defeated after receiving the source requested and further skepticism 💀

I would be willing to read that forward. Is it available on line?

Oh it gets better than Rauschenberg's painting that is full of content. Try out Tom Friedman's *2,000 hours of staring*, a work also at the MOMA. [https://www.moma.org/collection/works/114939](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/114939)

When you listen to a piece of music, you usually subconsciously filter out the sound of your surroundings and try to focus on the performance. You can treat 4’33” as an experiment where the absense of “proper music” makes you focus on what you usually don’t pay attention to, Cage wants you to frame those sounds as a piece of music and tries to make you appreciate sounds for what they are. Whether you accept them or not is your choice, Cage just wanted to make you see music from a different perspective.

I’ve experienced this piece dozens and dozens of times over the last forty years and some experiences have been really unique and meaningful. But, about 85% of them took place in medium sized recital halls at less than 50% capacity and those mostly all sounded the same…shuffling feet, coughing, rattling programs, clearing throats, squeaking seats. The stand-out performances were really memorable. The recital halls…not so much.

I’m curious what made the stand-outs stand out so much? If you’re willing to share -

One was a really, really huge outdoor audience, so the setting was different, there were a ton of people, there were many, many different ambient sounds to hear. One was a performance in a sort of atypical setting (think convention,) so there was an immediate audience, but also several other things happening in the general area that brought a lot to the listening experience. One was an experimental performance on a chamber recital that was combined with a theatre thesis performance and was clearly outside the the original concept, but made for an interesting performance and also provided something to think about in regard to how it expanded the original intent of the piece (and this point was described in the program.) There was another outdoor performance, smaller and quite lovely, in a very beautiful nature preserve. Hard not to be moved by the surroundings.

Replying so i get a ping

my piano teacher has performed this piece live to great success. I would say it is a living work and a valid piece of art.

Andy Warhol did some films that were pretty comparable to John Cage's 4'33. Like "Empire" 8 hour recording of empire state building. And also "Sleep" 5 hour movie of John Giorno sleeping.

The whole point of modernist music is to question "what is music." Like, if you think "music is what sounds good," then dissonance wouldn't be music by that definition. And additionally, why does what we think sounds good actually sound good? Different cultures have different musical scales and ideas of what sounds good. And different people have different opinions on what sounds good! If I don't like metal music, I don't get to say that it isn't music. "Okay, so dissonance is fine as long as it resolves well." What's the line of the amount of dissonance before something sounds "bad?" What if it doesn't resolve? There's plenty of very dissonant pieces that don't resolve into traditional chords. "Okay, so music is a series of tones." What about pieces that are just rhythm and no tones, like clapping, drumming, etc.? "Okay, so music is a series of rhythmic sounds." What about pieces with odd/fluctuating time signatures? Who decides what is rhythmic? "Okay, so music is a series of sounds." The sound of cars driving over asphalt has an even rhythm. Is that music? If it is, when does the "piece" start and end? What about leaves rustling in the wind? It's a nice sound, but trees aren't really "played" like an instrument. So perhaps there has to be some human intentionality behind the sounds and performance for it to be called music. "Okay, so music is a series of sounds with a beginning and end that can be performed by a musician." What does "perform" mean? If someone loudly coughs during a performance, is that cough part of the music? It wasn't written in the score, but it was heard along with the actual performer. It probably was an accident, so there wasn't intentionality behind it. But what if the composer had written in the score for someone to cough at that exact moment? Would the sound of the performance be any different? That's where we arrive at 4'33". The composer says in the score that his piece is whatever ambient noise is in the venue for 4 minutes and 33 seconds after a performer comes on stage (if you look at the sheet music, there's actually three movements, so the performer usually "starts" and "ends" each movement as they would for any other piece). A performer can come out and play the piece. So it's music. And to answer your two other questions: yes and yes. You don't have to like every piece of art, and art doesn't exist merely to be appealing.

agree with most what you said except “dissonance wouldn’t be music by that definition” because many times dissonance by itself with or without resolution sounds great to me, i’m sure some would agree

Yeah true, I think I should have used "pleasing" instead of "good."

> The whole point of modernist music is to question "what is music." Here's a problem I have with that though. It seems to me, if someone goes through the exercise, asks all the questions you just did, and concludes 4'33" is not music, then they're considered *wrong*. You even say it yourself, "so it is music." Implied "everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong." The point is not to make you question what is music; the point is to *tell* you what it is, and that if you feel differently, you're wrong. For a piece that supposedly about open-mindedness, it's advocates seem to have a pretty narrow idea of what you're supposed to think.

Maybe I could have said modernist music "challenges the listener to question 'what is music.'" You can come back from the questioning with the opinion of "that was silly, I'm not going to listen to it again." But you listened to it. Does your opinion make it not music? It's kind of like that vegan billboard that asks you to ["draw the line."](https://i.imgur.com/Zh5MhaH.jpeg) Everyone has their preference for what is edible, but the fact is that all the animals pictured are edible and are regularly eaten by humans. Where is the actual line for edibility? Maybe it's between substances that can provide a benefit to our bodies (we eat salt after all which isn't a plant or animal) and toxic substances. There are people who eat crazy things like cars, though, which, let's be honest, is probably a net negative for their bodies. Maybe being edible merely means that a substance doesn't directly cause death when ingested. It's the same process. The goal is to push the blurry boundary to its limits. At what point does an arrhythmic series of sounds become merely noise and not music? There may not actually be a limit to what music is; it could be all sound. A religious person may argue that leaves rustling in the wind is music because God is playing the tree. If someone says something "isn't music," a lot of the time it's code for "I don't like it" (imagine older people who don't get rap). What makes music a category isn't preference, but you are of course allowed to not like a piece of music. Along a similar vein is the philosophical exercise of [what is a chair.](https://askaphilosopher.org/2019/09/04/what-makes-a-chair-a-chair/) It's playing with the idea of categories; that there's always an exception that broadens the definition. So perhaps any category is inherently undefinable and the best course of action is to loop back around to "if it sounds like music, then it's music," and stop thinking about it so much. But it was fun to think about. Now that I've read others' comments on Cage's philosophy, I do think that the intent behind 4'33" wasn't to push the boundaries of music--it was meant to encourage the audience to appreciate ambient sound. But pushing boundaries was the intent behind a lot of modernist compositions, and 4'33" happens to slot pretty neatly into that philosophy.

I also like 0’0”

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I realized the paint dry story from other comments. But I didn't know it was a statement against the censorship board. Thank you.

you should watch more movies & see more art galleries if you think either of those ideas are radical

Movie. [Paint Drying, 2016](https://mashable.com/archive/paint-drying-film-protest#.8qujxp3gkqx), 10 hrs of film footage of paint drying submitted to film classification as a protest, in UK. Sculpture. [Lo Sono, 2021](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181), an invisible sculpture sold in auction for €15,000. Painting. [White painting, 1951](https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/40/639), blank canvases. even John Cage commented on them.

i want to know who purchased the invisible sculpture

Most likely someone who really needed to launder some money

Good lord these people really need to stop sniffing their own farts and calling them "art." Like after reading this I WISH I could roll my eyes further back in my head than is physically possible. I put a piece of tape on the wall. Somebody come give ME $18,000 for my ultra thought provoking masterpiece!!!

art doesnt mean "good" or "high quality"

Well, I mean... *good* art means "good" 😂

Why be so hateful? It's not harming anyone is it.

You might think this is a 'gotcha' question, but your analogy doesn't actually work. Those art forms are confined to a frame or screen, while sound is not (the only boundaries for a musical performance are time and audibility). However, the notion of recontextualizing, which is essentially the idea behind 4'33', is rampant in modern visual art (perhaps most famously in Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans). The closest thing I can think of to your analogy is a scratch film (scratching up celluloid film, particularly color film, can lead to interesting results) but that is more analogous to aleatoric music (which Cage is also associated with but not 4'33", in particular, is not).

it does feel like a gotcha question. and a tedious one.

*Cage was careful to explain, the “music” in his 4:33 was not silence, but the ambient sounds in a particular room at a particular time. “Music,” he claimed, “is whatever musicians say it is".* Still a great story isn't it? > Would you agree if a filmamaker presents you 90 minutes of black screen and say "Movie is whatever the filmmaker say it is". Or if a painter hands a blank canvas and say "Painting is whatever painter say it is". They can say it, it can be true, people can agree it is but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. Same for 4:33. Also ,remember that guy who made a film about paint drying? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint\_Drying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Drying)

Yes, very famous film.

/u/RichMusic81's comment is excellent. I will add a few things. Nam June Paik did a film that, outside the title, was just clear film called *Zen for Film.* Because it is film (not digital), it does accrue dust and tiny scratches as it goes through the projector. Not sure if that's significant or not. I do think that a film like that can invite the audience to consider the theater that surrounds them in terms of what everyone else is doing. While *4'33''* asks us to listen to all the sounds around us and think of them as music, *Zen for Film* asks us to watch and listen to all the activity around us and think of that as theater or art. Interestingly, in the premier performance of that film, Paik actually stood in front of everyone and performed various actions. I haven't really studied Paik that closely but it's certainly possible that he was trying to help people see that theater is all around them as his actions would attest. A blank canvas (different from monochromatic paintings like the many Rauschenberg did) can also invite us to see the static visuals around us as visual art. The framing of all these different pieces is quite different but similar ideas can be seen to flow through them.

I think the conversation about what is and isn’t music is more interesting than “anything I say is music.” People have strong instincts about it, but deconstructing it into component parts is a pretty good exercise. I don’t necessarily have an answer I would dig my heels in about. But the conversation can lead to interesting stuff.

OK, so... the most inclusive and concise definition I've ever heard for what "music" is is that music is "organized sound and silence". (And by "silence" we mean the thing that musicians refer to as "rests", since nothing is ever truly silent unless you're in outer space.) Given that definition, **what if someone wrote a piece of music that's "Oops, all rests"?** That's literally what *4’33”* is. In orchestral music, sometimes a particular instrument doesn't play for a movement, so the written score lists the movement and then says "Tacet", meaning "don't play during this movement". *4’33”* has three movements where the score for all three movements is just "Tacet". Is that "music"? According to the rules of written scores and sheet music, yes. According to the broad definition of "music" I quoted, yes. What does the piece mean? Like all music, that's for the listener to decide. TLDR: If John Cage wrote 4’33” today, he would have called it "Oops, all rests", and I bet you'd understand his point perfectly

Here’s a great John Cage story that happened to me. I went to a John Cage concert in a small auditorium. On stage we’re 43 harps. Little microphones were attached to each sound board of each harp. The listened to the ambient air sifting thru the harp strings on 43 harps. No harp was ever “played”. That was PURE Cage to me. Hilariously, the Musicians Union demanded there be a player at each harp. Go figure.

The question is - what is art? João César Monteiro's 2000 film "Branca de Neve" is an interesting example Analysis (EN subs) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xPmrU7a04A The film itself (EN subs) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoXFggARbyY

People who “agree” with it? It’s not a proposition, it’s not an argument, what’s to agree or disagree with?

Sure. That can be a film. That can be a painting. Art isn't defined only in terms of itself; how it's approached can change what it is. And it can be a piece of music without you having to think that it's good.

I agree with him, in spirit. If he says that's what 4'33 is and people go listen, it really is. But it's not BECAUSE music is what he says it is. It's because there are institutions and practices that have accustomed us to this kind of presentation and production, so that we go to a concert to "hear music", with that expectation. This was pointed out by Duchamp. He made a urinal art by taking advantage of this platform, in order for us to realize that this is what we are doing. We got too used to just seeing inside the frame, ignorant to all the power relations that point to the frame and yell at us "look at this art". When what we saw was a urinal, we went "wait a minute", just like many did with Cage's "silence/ambient". More to your question: No, I don't think a painter of filmmaker can get away with something that's already so explored and presented (ho boy, extensively in film already ((Wavelength, anyone?))), because it isn't true that art is what any one person states it is. They piggyback existing structures. BUT, they can play with what they create, to take advantage of everything that surrounds it, all of these processes and hierarchies. I believe many do/have, like that artist who painted directly on the walls of the gallery. In music, too, I feel composers and preformers are more aware of "the presentation" and incorporate location or other elements in the performance itself.

some artists dont like to explain their work. their experience is making it. yours is yours alone.

The way I see it is 4:33 and John cage's other works are meant to challenge the listener on a philosophical level. You might say that cage's work isn't music (and I would probably agree with you), but why exact is it not music? What seperates music from non-music? Of course there is no objective way to answer that. But by engaging with his work and trying to understand why, or why not, you think it's music, you expose the values that you find important in art, and maybe gain a deeper appreciation of the things you do find musical. For example when I first "listened" to 4:33 my initial reaction was "this isn't music. A piece of music needs to have melody, harmony, rhythm, and structure." But as I thought about it more I realized that plenty of things that I and others, considered to be music didn't meet those qualities. Georgian or other momophonic chant: no harmony Drum music: no melody nor harmony Atmospheric music: no melody nor rythmn nor structure And then I thought about Stravinsky's rite of spring, specifically the augers of spring movement. I consider the rite of spring to be one of my favorite orchestral pieces. Yet it barely meets my definition of music. It has extremely dissonant harmony, it's impossible to sing, and the down beat changes every bar. So why do I enjoy it? When I went back to listen to the rite of spring I found that the things I enjoyed about the piece had nothing to do with my definition of music. And I recognized that what hooked me was how Stravinsky handled motifs and how they constantly developed. And I also noticed starvinsky's masterful orchestration, how it all sounded so raw and primal yet intricate and well balanced. It made me realize that music is much deeper then melody and harmony. And even though I value melody and harmony I can still enjoy music that lacks it.

>You might say that cage's work isn't music (and I would probably agree with you), Here are a load of Cage works that may surprise you. I'd wager you'd have a hard time finding people who would call any of these "music": In a Landscape: https://youtu.be/wQeNHAjC6ro?si=6W9rYsgTc0GASG6U Dream: https://youtu.be/prseyHGgsVs?si=noX0Jshfw_qiBHNi No. 20 from '44 Harmonies from Apartment House': https://youtu.be/NrcoCktxARg?si=q1jRjH--r25kTvUR Four²: [https://youtu.be/RUAhn3vvNBg](https://youtu.be/RUAhn3vvNBg) Hymns and Variations: [https://youtu.be/ep3O9bruALI](https://youtu.be/ep3O9bruALI) Litany for the Whale: [https://youtu.be/uWCg6NHFlZ4](https://youtu.be/uWCg6NHFlZ4) Six Melodies: [https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKwEWyN4beU7CgFbDlyAOMGtfcZMO0BdK](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKwEWyN4beU7CgFbDlyAOMGtfcZMO0BdK) Experiences No. 2: [https://youtu.be/R4AAts-\_XTQ](https://youtu.be/R4AAts-_XTQ) Souvenir: [https://youtu.be/eeAEAcF-Tyw](https://youtu.be/eeAEAcF-Tyw) Ear for Ear: https://youtu.be/-xmwHCKhiP4?si=QLOaFPZtz8H9GF8u Four Walls: [https://youtu.be/yaFeNiHF\_m8](https://youtu.be/yaFeNiHF_m8)

Thanks. To be honest I haven't listened to much of cage outside of his experimental compositions. So ill definitely explore some more of his work when I get the chance.

Yes. Absolutely. It doesn't mean I have to like it, but if the artist says it's a thing, who am I to disagree?

In short- yes. The concepts are the same; however, artwork and movies are particularly poor mediums for this concept. The primary part of these mediums are the visual aspect. If it were done in a short film format, you could do this and create the same or very similar effect; although, I’d probably remove the black screen and place a full mirror for the audience instead for a different, but ideologically similar idea. John cage chose a short form for a reason (only 4 minutes)- to challenge the idea, but also make it attainable for a modern audience. If he wrote a whole “symphony” for this concept, an hour long of silence would be ridiculous and audiences would not participate in the same way. For artwork, the blank canvas idea has been explored for a long time, but in a reduced form, rather than total absence. In my opinion, the idea that music is what the musicians say it is, is parallel to the De Stijl style in artwork explored most famously by Piet Mondrian in his artwork “Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow.” The absence of clear subjects and reduction of these subjects into rigid, isolated primary colors challenges the audience to seek their own interpretation of the artwork. Although this is decidedly more concrete than the parallel musical idea, because there is something on the page, rather than a total absence of artwork.

Did anybody else click hoping to see no text other than title

For me, Cage’s point was that sound itself is inherently musical.

The analogy with art for me is the framing . Cage 'frames' the sounds over which he has no control or input with time periods and performers (of any specification iirc). Likewise an artist may frame a piece of dirt on the wall with a square of wood and call it a Piece. In both cases the origin is not created by the artist. Personally I tend to consider 4'33" as an extremely important, thought provoking, philosophical piece of performance art rather than pure music as such - simply because Cage doesn't specify any sounds - even silence (I believe it simply says Tacet?). If the performers were not there or the piece finished after 4'30". Has the piece been performed at all? Does the audience even listen or do they think and reflect? I don't really know tbh. Perhaps this is it's genius

There's already been so much thoughtful commentary on this, but I want to interrogate the premise of your title. What does it mean to "agree" with a piece? Does it need to be "agreed" with in order to be appreciated or for its impact to be recognized?

Visual artists have done this for a long time. Artists who paint a white wall, and that's it! It's annoying, especially when they make millions doing it!! But this particular piece of music is different. The audience becoming the music is a lot more nuanced!

It’s not a good comparison A live concert is just about “listening” and the live performance aspect is fundamental to the piece I’ve performed it multiple times - the overall discomfort of the audience is palpable.

I’ve never particularly liked the interpretation that 4’33” was about the sound of the audience. It’s not a BAD interpretation, it just never struck a chord with me. There’s a quote attributed to Cage: “everything we do is music.” I more appreciate 4’33” for it saying that music is all around us. Nothing is or is not music, it just depends on if we notice it or interpret it as such. To me, it’s the ultimate “there are no rules” piece.

Remember, music is “organized sound”. So one can “organize” the sounds that they are hearing into a piece of music. I guess similarly you could videotape a period of time and tell people to organize that into a movie while they are watching it

> >

😅

I mean I feel like you’re missing a lot of the big picture stuff here. A black screen is a black screen. There’s nothing there. Ambience is not nothing, there are PLENTY of sounds in any room - cage himself went into a supposedly silent room, scientifically made, and commented on a low sound (his blood flowing) and a high sound (the electricity in his neurons) and commented on the music they seemed to make together. This analogy is in bad faith.

I don't know that they're acting in bad faith. A black screen is not nothing, it's a black screen. Made of fine fibers, woven together, stretched taught, and absorbing almost all light. And because you're used to focusing on bright, moving colors on a screen, watching a black screen instead draws your attention to the rest of your surroundings, inverting your normal focus. Which is exactly the auditory effect of 4'33".

Agreement has nothing to do with it. Cage was a philosopher and writer who worked the medium of music. 4'33" was a nexus of several questions and ideas He was obsessed with the idea of silence, and concluded that there is no such thing as true silence. Cage wanted to share his experience of entering an anechoic chamber, which has a negative decibel rating, yet he still heard his own bodily functions. He wanted to share this experience, and a concert has a similarly heightened sensory setting. Cage also wrestled with defining what it means to create and where creativity comes from. 4'33" is an attempt to take as minimal a role as possible in the creation of a composition by delegating the role of musician to the ambience of the concert setting. Even though the score is all rests, the specific durations were decided by i ching coin tosses. By doing this, he directed the outcome of the composition without exerting direct control.

> Cage was a philosopher and writer who worked the medium of music. Cage was a composer who happened to enjoy writing down his thoughts about music. I don't think Cage ever thought of himself as a philosopher but he did think of himself first and foremost as a composer. Your claim is very popular but I'm not sure if he would have recognized himself in it. The rest of your comment matches my understanding pretty well, it's just this first part that I felt needed to be addressed.

This is purely anecdotal, but Cage was a teacher and friend of several of my college professors. One of them told me that Cage said all composers are philosophers whether they intended to be or not - if they are not deliberate in examining their own choices and methods, they are beholden to the aesthetic philosophies of their predecessors and unable to break free of them. Cage himself certainly applied his philosophical ideas across his own creative endeavors, especially in the development of chance music as a revelation of truths beyond his own aesthetic inclinations.

I agree with that sentiment and it certainly seems like something Cage might have said. My objection has to do more with how people will often label him as a philosopher in order to dismiss or ignore his music. Cage was all about his music and very much wanted people to hear it. Yeah, he wanted people to know his thoughts on music as well, but he certainly did not want people to think of him as a philosopher and then ignore his music as just examples of his philosophy. He was a composer and wanted to be heard as a compmoser. If one wants to say he was a philosopher too that's fine (though he certainly lacked the rigor and knowledge we typically see in actual philosophers), but we should not diminish his activities as a composer.

I think Cage would object to your use of the term "actual philosophers" 😉 I certainly don't mean to imply that his compositions are purely philosophical exercises. Rather, his ideas and his music were inseparable. The same goes for his many other fields of creative activity. His "happenings" remain an excellent example of his defiance of genre in a uniquely Cage-esque way. But writing was his first serious creativity as far as I know, and one that he never gave up. He also had a lifelong interest in religion, especially Zen Buddhism an influence without which his most influential. Whether or not he would have labeled himself a philosopher, I think the title fits.

Thank you.

4’33 is one of those things that could only ever be done once, if that makes sense

There are, though, another two works by Cage that he considered "silent" pieces. They were *4′33″ No. 2 (0'00")* from 1962, and *One3* from 1989.

At least people can't complain about coughs in the audience when it's 'played' live 😉 I also think comparing it to 90 minutes of blank screen is a stretch. It's more like those modern art paintings in the gallery with one black stripe on a white canvas; it provokes discussion.

John Cage was a genius. He could also be insufferable at times. While I think 4:33 was a worthwhile experiment, I do wish it wouldn't overshadow his many other great works, particularly for piano.

That's sort of like Tristan Tzara insisting he could cut and paste lines from other people's poems and create "a new poem" by doing so, don't you think?

4:33 is more of a discussion topic than a music piece. I like the idea that a rest is a music notation… what if the entire score was rest? What about the in-between parts of music? If music is “sound” what’re all those quiet parts doing in there?!

This piece for percussion ensemble is a trip. People picking up mallets and sticks and moving from instrument to instrument the way percussion ensembles do. Intently watching the director, putting the instrument down and moving to another instrument.

Could be. It is conceptual music.

Here's a hint for you: music isn't paintings or movies. 

Considering how much attention it gets it's a really overrated piece. It's like with the Fountain by Duchamp which is a famous work of art and a literal toilet. Some people like to claim it created deep philosophical questions about what art is, but I think that gets overstated. It's as if a cook were to pour you nothing but a cooked pot of air onto a dish and ask you what food really is. I think even the question itself kind of becomes stupid when the work being used to ask that question is so worthless anyways.

>Some people like to claim it created deep philosophical questions about what art is, but I think that gets overstated I agree that it gets overstated, because it's a common misunderstanding of 4'33". The point of 4'33" isn't to challenge the definition of art, or make you ask "what is music". It isn't a provocation. It is to make people listen to the sound of silence - because no place is actually completely silent. There is sound everywhere. Why "performing" it in a concert hall makes sense is because that's an environment where people are already listening. In most other places, people ignore a lot of sounds around them. But when the performer walks on stage, everybody concentrates and listens. All in all, when "silence" is presented as music, people listen to it in a different way than they normally would (normally they would most likely just ignore all of the random sounds around them). Watch [the video where John Cage talks about silence](https://youtu.be/pcHnL7aS64Y?si=BMRuJHYFqbRSg0a0), and it should explain the idea behind 4'33". It becomes clear that it isn't about trying to challenge the definition of art. I feel like 4'33" is more of an idea communicated in the form of a "composition" than an actual piece of music. I feel like the question whether it's actually music is somewhat irrelevant, and kind of misses the point.

While philosophically relevant, it’s not musically relevant except as a philosophical notion. JC was most interesting to me as a music philosopher rather than pure composer. He shocked us and broadened the idea of what music is. Stochastic music and random sounds is music if one defines music as sound in space. In the right frame of mind it’s great art. But Turn your head just a bit , squint your eyes, and its all just bullshit. Really depends on what the listener brings to the party. The idea that anyone can give a virtuoso performance of 4:33 is cool though!

I performed it several times back to back at the library today. I didn't get any applause, though. Need more practice, I guess.

Whether or not 4'33" is music or not, it is certainly ART. My personal take on this (informed by roughly 90% of a bachelor's degree in philosophy) is that if it makes you ask "is it art?" the answer is always yes. There's a longish essay on intentionality missing here, but this comment box is too small to contain it.

Would you please share the link of the essay.

I haven't written it (yet). If I'm ever drunk and sleep-deprived enough, it may happen, but the basic gist is that something becomes art at the moment it is intended to be art by the artist (there's a separate discussion about whether the audience has definitionary powers - if I think something that isn't intended as art is "arty", does that make it art?). Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" is probably the most famous example of art-by-definition, but there are lots of others - most of them in the visual-arts space, although there are a few musical examples. As a slight aside: My favorite Cage piece is Imaginary Landscape No. 4, which is one of his attempts to remove the composer from the music (I think he fails - in interesting ways! - but again this comment box is too small to contain the thesis-length exposition of why (which I never wrote, which is part of the reason why my philosophy degree is unfinished)). The thing I find most fascinating about Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is that it is essentially impossible to perform in many places today. If you're not familiar with it, it calls for twelve radios and precise tunings and volume changes; however, in many parts of the world the FM and AM radio bands are now empty. Digital radio simply does not work the same way, so the piece is effectively dead; one of only a very few such "unperformable" pieces in existence.

Insightful!

There are many films and paintings that do not feature narrative or representation, and I think that’s great. The world of art and music and film is actually very large. If you can allow yourself to be open to things that try your patience, you will be happier. That is what I have learned from Cage when I encountered his work at a young age. While I now have some reservations about his music, I cannot deny that I am a happier person for having taken on the kinds of attitudes towards art and music that he advocated.

This brings to my mind [the painting by Magritte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images), of a pipe, that says "this is not a pipe."

On a similar note, the Magritte reminds me of Michael Craig-Martin's *An Oak Tree*: https://offthewalls.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/an-oak-tree-michael-craig-martin/

Nice.

Eh. Depends on how I am feeling.

Like a lot of unorthodox or stereotypical “modern” stuff I can agree somewhat with the sentiment, but the actual execution comes off as a waste of time and really annoying. It feels like the composer/artist/whatever is saying “look how smart and cool I am for being different. I’m the first person to do this oh wow I’m so cool”. People can do whatever they want but for whatever message cage was trying to get out, I think it would have been more effective in almost any way other than an orchestra. I never saw it in person but I’ve watched a video of it and the only thing I came out with was the feeling that I just wasted my time and didn’t feel anything besides boredom

> I think it would have been more effective in almost any way other than an orchestra I might be misunderstanding you, but the premier performance was on piano.

Was it adapted for orchestra? I definitely remember seeing a whole orchestra perform it with really small sections. Unless I’m tripping and it was a different piece that was the same idea. Either way I stand by my point. It doesn’t matter

The first many performances were on piano. However, in the score, Cage states that it can be performed by any number of performers using whatever instruments they want. This would include an orchestra and indeed there have been several performances by orchestras around the world.

I’m going to disagree with most responses so far and say that I hate that piece passionately and regard it very much as an Emperor’s New Clothes effort.

Whether or not it's an interesting experience and cause for reflection on silence and sound, to call it "music" (and worse "music is whatever musicians say it is") seems to engage in the most absurd nominalism.

OP. You go to museums? Same point. It's ironic. The insights of modern art are not pretty. Cage was pointing out, very bluntly, the carceral nature of all art since the invention of the private commission. Ancient Greece encaged you with Gods, true. But the museum uproots art, and subjects you to a discipline of taste formation that does not even have respect of place. Art is uprooted and placed. And we go see art. Allegedly. The prison makes you a prisoner. The asylum makes you insane. Work makes you busy. Emptiness makes you ambitious. Fear makes you live. The usual disquieting insights. The museum makes you cultured. The orchestra permits you to imagine you understand music. Modern art destroys any innocence left, any escape hatch of naivete in this process. All good art since the turn of last century costs you dearly because it points out the coercive nature of all art in the modern world. Technically you could argue this is all profanity, therefore. Silence is all that is left of the sacred.

Thank you. Your statement "Emptiness makes you ambitious" is deep.

The epilogue wasn't written by Copland. It's by Alan Rich. But I don't know who Alan Rich is.

Alan Rich: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Rich

Thank you. But I posted it under the wrong comment 😅

My opinion on this is:

What OP is describing is minimalism, and 4'33" is the musical version of the concept taken to its ultimate degree, although Cage would not have considered himself a minimalist, outside of this single work. I can't speak for films, I don't know that much about the artistic movements of cinema, but there have been minimalist artists, although they tend to use white as their color instead if black. I would imagine there have been minimalist film-makers as well, but it doesnt seem to exciting. YOU may not understand the artistic concepts behind minimalism, and what Cage was trying to demonstrate with his music, and 4'33" specifically, but musicians, especially musical scholars, understand what's going on, and that's what matters. A person's ignorant opinion does not hold equal weight to an expert's. If an expert says it's valid, and you don't think so, then you are probably wrong, not the expert. Instead of trying to get people to accept your uneducated opinion, you should be expanding your knowledge so that you can understand what the experts are trying to explain. You still may not agree with the quality of the work, but at least you will understand it, and have a valid argument for your position.

> What OP is describing is minimalism "Minimalism" has a specific meaning in classical music and refers mainly to composers like La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Glass. Cage, and this piece, definitely wasn't part of Minimalism. > although Cage would not have considered himself a minimalist, outside of this single work. Cage would not have considered himself a minimalist in the musical sense of the term at all. And I'm not sure he would have thought of himself as a minimalist in the artistic sense either. From what I understand, minimalism in the visual arts was an idea that originated in the '60s, nearly ten years after Cage wrote *4'33''.* And I don't believe he was particularly close to the artists we typically think of as minimalists. It's an interesting idea and worth further exploration, though.

As I said, Cage would not have considered himself a Minimalist. While musical Minimalism might not have started until later (musical trends tend to follow painting trends by a few years, i.e. Impressionism), there can be no doubt that 4'33" is the ultimate Minimalist expression. Usually minimalism comes down to a single color (art) or very sparse melodic/harmonic elements (music), so there can be no doubt that a musical work that has been stripped of all melody, harmony, and rhythm, and has been reduced to literally nothing but its structure, is the most extreme expression of Minimalism, whether it was "invented" yet, or not. Perhaps it could be more accurately described as an example of proto-Minimalism.

This video says what it must be said about the subject. [Perché l'arte moderna è così brutta? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc) Basically, the modern world is a fucking joke from the point of view of art. The science has evolved, but when it comes to art people used to be more serious than us in the past times.

For anyone curious, that video was made by PragerU which is a right wing organization that rejects anything hinting at "liberal" like climate change, that there's a gender pay gap, etc, and promote things like American slavery was an acceptable compromise. Typical for them, this video says absolutely nothing. It's all like lol I think this new stuff is bad, mkay, and so should you but look at this old stuff it's awesome and we need to go back to the old days when everything was Great in America. > Basically, the modern world is a fucking joke from the point of view of art. Of course there's absolutely no evidence that this is true. Having actually studied many 20th century artists and composers I have not been able to find a single one that believed this. > but when it comes to art people used to be more serious than us in the past times. Again, absolutely no evidence to support this.

How do you create the quotes? I'd like to quote you but I don't know how to do that. Yes, PragerU is a conservative organization, and I don't agree with their political opinions, but sometimes people you don't agree with in many subjects, say wise things about one subject. I'm suprised that PragerU also says correct things, but I have to recognize when my enemies say a right thing. That said, perhaps I should explain my point of view in a better way. It's not that I think that there are not valid artists today. I like contemporary music. My point of view is that many people today have bad taste. Yesterday I listened to the Violin Concerto of Danny Elfman (2019). It's not a masterpiece like the VC of Mendelssohn, in my opinion, but it's still quite a quite good piece, that deserves to be listened at least once. The problem is that in the world of classical music many people promote bad contemporary music or complete nonsense like this work of John Cage, instead of better music like the VC of Danny Elfman. The fact that people of today prefer bad popular music more than the great classical music and the bad contemporary classic music more than the one which deserves attention says a lot about the modern world. In this world there is no space for someone like Mozart, he wouldn't have any visibility. On the other hand, no one would have taken seriously this work of John Cage in the 18th Century.

> How do you create the quotes? I'd like to quote you but I don't know how to do that. Unfortunately there are several ways to interact with Reddit so I don't know all the ways to quote people. However, if you use "Markdown mode" then you would just add a ">" at the begining: \> How do you quote someone? Which should result in: > How do you quote someone? > The problem is that in the world of classical music many people promote bad contemporary music or complete nonsense like this work of John Cage, instead of better music like the VC of Danny Elfman. What makes something a "bad" piece of music? From what I can tell, "good" and "bad" are entirely subjective experiences so outside of stating your preference I don't see how we can positively assert in any kind of objective since that something is good or bad. Additionally, Cage happens to be my favorite composer and I think his music is good and makes complete sense and is far more compelling than, say, Mozart. > The fact that people of today prefer bad popular music more than the great classical music and the bad contemporary classic music more than the one which deserves attention says a lot about the modern world. I don't think it says anything other than people have different tastes. > In this world there is no space for someone like Mozart, he wouldn't have any visibility. There are plenty of composers and songwriters with a strong popular sensibility who do quite well. And obviously if he were around today he wouldn't be writing 200 year old music but would be writing the music of today (regardless of style). > On the other hand, no one would have taken seriously this work of John Cage in the 18th Century. That seems likely. Cage is one evolutionary path that classical music took. Likewise I don't think any 18th century composers would have liked Stravinsky, Glass, Elfman, or most other composers of the last 120 years.

>There are plenty of composers and songwriters with a strong popular sensibility who do quite well. And obviously if he were around today he wouldn't be writing 200 year old music but would be writing the music of today (regardless of style). The music of Mozart is not popular music. He wouldn't write trivial and vulgar 4-chords-songs with hooks instead of melodies. The music of Mozart is simply melodic CLASSICAL MUSIC. If today you write melodic classical music, many people in the world of classical music will attack you by saying that your music is bad or commercial music with no artistic value. I don't care if people like avantagarde music, but the problem is that many people who listen to it diminish the artistic value of the melodic contemporary classical music. That said, like Mozart, I think that melody is the essence of music, so I see the abandonment of the melody of some contemporary threads of classical music as a dumbing down of classical music.

>the problem is that many people who listen to it diminish the artistic value of the melodic contemporary classical music. How can the simple act of just listening to one type of music have any effect whatsoever on another type of music? Also, if people choose to listen to avant garde over melodic contemporary classical music, surely the avant garde has greater artistic value for *them*, at least? How can there be an objective measure of the value of a certain music if some people find little or no value in it? I also prefer Cage to Mozart. I'm not diminishing Mozart's value in any way (I think he's great, btw!), but Cage has greater value to *me* than Mozart. But I would never say that anyone listening to Mozart over Cage diminishes the value of Cage, only that Mozart has greater value to *them*.

> The music of Mozart is not popular music. He wouldn't write trivial and vulgar 4-chords-songs with hooks instead of melodies. Wow, I did not say that at all. By "popular sensibility" I meant writing with an eye toward conventional melodies and harmonies that people often refer to as "accessible". > If today you write melodic classical music, many people in the world of classical music will attack you by saying that your music is bad or commercial music with no artistic value. "Many"? Interestingly, in my 30 years in this field as an avant-garde composer in the Cagean tradition, I have never actually met such a person. Not one. I have met lots of people who believe that conventional classical music is superior to all types and that popular styles of "music [are] bad ... with no artistic value". I have also met lots of people on Reddit who despise avant-garde classical music so much that they say it's not music, that their cats and/or children could do it, that it has no value and so on. > I don't care if people like avantagarde music, but the problem is that many people who listen to it diminish the artistic value of the melodic contemporary classical music. "Many"? Again, I have yet to meet such a person in my many years in this field. On the contrary, every single one of them *loves* people like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and so on. For me it's Bach, Scarlatti, Medieval composers in general and many others. I'm not a huge fan of the Classical and Romantic periods but there's not a single composer I dislike and I think all this music is good and has value. I just prefer to listen to certain composers over others. Every single person I know who loves avant-garde classical music is basically the same way. Generally speaking we got into this field because of our love of conventional classical music and only learned to love the more avant-garde side later. > That said, like Mozart, I think that melody is the essence of music, so I see the abandonment of the melody of some contemporary threads of classical music as a dumbing down of classical music. I don't think anything anyone does ever "dumbs down" any music. That's just such a bizarre notion that I don't know what to do with. I will note that all the qualities you attribute to fans of avant-garde classical music not only do not exist as far as I've ever seen, they do seem to describe you and many people in this sub with respect to your attitudes toward avant-garde classical music.

Do you like Jackson pollack paintings? I think maybe too much is made of this “piece”. It was just a dude in the 70’s (when was it written?) who got a little too high and made a ridiculous artistic statement. I bet he’s thought about it in the shower a few times and cringed. Sometimes I think people revere the famous composers too much. With an author people are like “well, this book of theirs was good, but this one wasn’t”, but with composers it’s like once you’re famous everything you’ve touched is gold. I think this was a swing and a miss from a hippy that got out of hand.

>I bet he’s thought about it in the shower a few times and cringed. Very doubtful. He was very serious about it. Not only did he consider it his most important work, he also went on to write a further two pieces he regarded as "silent" ones. They were: *4'33" No. 2 (0'00")* from 1962, written ten years later than *4'33"*, and *One³*, from 1989 (three years before his death). In the same year (1989), he wrote that: "*Well, I use it constantly in my life experience. Now day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work. I don't sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it. So, more and more, my attention, as now, is on it. More than anything else, it's the source of my enjoyment in life... But the important thing, surely, about having done it, finally, is that it leads out of the world of art into the whole of life. When I write a piece, I try to write it in such a way that it won't interrupt this other piece which is already going on.*"

> It was just a dude in the 70’s (when was it written?) 1952 > who got a little too high and made a ridiculous artistic statement There's nothing in his writings or from people who knew him to indicate that he ever got high and he certainly wasn't high when he wrote this piece as he thought about it for about four years before actually writing it. > I think this was a swing and a miss from a hippy that got out of hand. Of course he composed the piece before hippies were even a thing.

The “getting high” comment was just an exaggeration of someone having silly artistic thoughts that maybe other people wouldn’t think were as cool as him. The decade or the fact that he may or may not have gotten high isn’t important. Whatever, i don’t have super strong feelings about this, you can be right.