More great points. I really need to write another post on this…

Etha, do you think it’s really possible to listen to Mozart in a non-musical manner? That’s actually a really interesting way of turning the question around: instead of arguing over whether 4′33″ is music, can we argue that stereotypically musical things can be listened to in a way which makes them not music? I’m not sure, but there must be a transition point somewhere.

So 4′33” can be seen as an extension of musique concrete in that it takes the idea of using environmental noise as music, but instead of having a composer gather it and arrange/manipulate it, it leaves that all up to the listener (this is also in line with Cage’s ideas about the absence of the composer’s ego; and one of the reasons I find the 4′33” lawsuit not just ridiculous, but immoral). At the same time, it also utilizes aleatoric thinking, leaving the sounds produced utterly to chance.

Well fine, but is it music? I would say that if you let it be music, then it is. Another thing going on in the post-War music was this very question: “What is music?” Stockhausen defined it in a manner which is still popular today: “time experienced through sound.” To me, this definition puts the weight of the responsibility on the listener (the “experiencer”). A composer’s job is to help to prompt this experience in the listener, be it through tonal strategies or through musical “framing” (as Cage did by putting 4′33” in a concert hall context). But ultimately it is up to the listener whether he accepts the composer’s invitation. You can listen to Mozart in a non-musical manner; and if you do, then for you Mozart is not music. And you can listen to environmental noise in a musical manner; if you do, then that noise is music. (Personally, I try to take a few minutes out of every day to really focus on the sound around me and to hear it in a musical manner; I find it very rewarding, as it increases my awareness and appreciation of the world around me.)

Ben

I have no problem with anything you said above in your last post about the history of music (both the word and the thing itself), but I don’t think a facile “work” like 4′33″ helps further that discussion. 4′33″ is basically a rather banal didactic idea masquerading as a genuine art work. Just as Kitsch is essentially non-art as opposed to being simply bad art, 4′33″ is not even bad music, it’s just non-music.

Speaking of micro-tones, everyone should check out the works of Michael Harrison. He uses a piano tuned in Pure Intonation rather than the tradtional Well-Tempered tuning that has been the norm since Bach in the West. Quite interesting stuff.

Well, I’m off now to enjoy the Music of the Spheres.

Truus, no, Maaike

You’re right, I should have reworded that phrase to “music a a means to return to inner silence”. Because that’s what Cage was after, in my opinion. The way he does this is quite similar to meditation: by shedding off layers of sound, and focussing on what you discover next, you ultimately arrive at silence.

I’m a bit weary of defining/ assessing something by its etymological history. For one, it doesn’t really say that much. Sure, ‘music’ derives from Ancient Greek ‘muse’, but what exactly does that say about the intrinsic value of a word? Its place in our society? Ultimately, the majority of our words stem from either Greek, Latin or Germanic, simply because English (and Dutch in my case) belong to the same language family as those languages. It would be weird if we used the African word for music.

Second, etymology doesn’t stop at ancient Greek; the root of ‘muse’ (mousa), itself derives from a much earlier ‘language’, the Indo European stem mendh-, which means ‘to learn’ and also ‘to dream’. It’s a shared root for both muse, music, but also mathematic, and features in both indian and european language families. Muses typically inspired artists in their dreams, so perhaps that’s where the connotation comes from.

It is interesting to observe what has been considered to be music throughout the centuries: at certain points in Roman history, music also included poetry, which we now see as a separate genre (but what about rap & hiphop). In the medieval trivium & quadrivium that you mentioned earlier, there were actually three kinds of music: music of the instruments (the ‘traditional’ music as we know it), the music of the spheres, and another one, which I can’t recall now. The music of the spheres is completely silent, it’s not supposed to include sound. Indian music has rhythms and microtones that sound completely amusical to Western ears. But in our own Western tradition too, at one time, intervals that are now totally acceptable and even boring for us (such as the major third) caused just as much indignation and discussion as this comment thread on 4′33″.

So, music (just as language) isn’t as well-defined and invariable as you seem to argue.

But you haven’t really answered my question: why are you so upset by 4′33″? Apart from the whole definition thing?

Thank you Ben for the stimulating discussion, signing off now, my cats need food & attention

My point about the Greeks was not about the origins of music as such, but about it’s understanding and developments in Western Culture for over 2500 years. The Greek etymological root of the word Music is undeniable, whatever you think of the supposed value of ancient Indian music. But then again, I have a hard time taking seriously the arguments of anyone who thinks anyone who thinks the Classical music tradition of Western Culture is “much overrated”. I enjoy the occasional sitar Raga by Ashwin Batish or Ravi Shankar, but I wouldn’t put any such piece on the same level as, to use just one Western example, Bach’s The Art of Fugue.

Again, beg to differ here What Cage does, is returning to the roots of music that go way further back than our own, quite recently developed, but much overrated Western Classical Music tradition. Music has been around a lot longer than the ancient Greeks (and certainly much longer than the medieval liberal arts); the Indian musical culture, for instance, is much older. And it is this tradition, music as a means to return to silence and inner harmony, that was the inspiration for 4′33″.

If you don’t feel that 4′33″ is music, that’s of course fine. But to dismiss it as a PR stunt is taking things a bit too far in my opinion. Cage wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t unmusical either. Why being so dismissive about someone trying to break the boundaries of our own tradition? Why would notating stuff in ‘proper’ bars and rests all of a sudden make something more musical? Because it’s more confined, more rigid, more familiar to what you’re used to?

Oh well, at least, 4′33″ is easier on the ears than a lot of “post-modern twaddle” that you seem to dislike