Classical Convert

Silencio

We were chatting about the joy of transcriptions the other day; how they let you hear aspects of a piece which you previously missed through familiarity or sonic occlusion. Well here’s a transcription which doesn’t quite provide those advantages, but which is curious nonetheless. It’s a version of 4′33” for orchestra:

Things to watch out for: the conductor mopping his brow between movements, the audience holding off on coughing until the intervals, the blond chick on the edge of her seat.

One of my most surprising musical learning moments was when I realized that 4′33″ wasn’t a load of bullshit. It forces people to clarify and consider what their definition of music is, without strictly being a composition itself. It is sort of meta-music. I think it is quite fascinating how much of a conversation (internal or external) you can produce by simply questioning if the piece is music, and if not, why not?

But then I feel all pretentious and artsy-fartsy and have to go play Mario Kart.

Tags: 4'33", john cage, youtube

The Stupidest Music Lawsuit Ever - Infringing on Cage’s 4′33″

The internet is riddled through with music copyright infringement lawsuits, like a great big illegal swiss cheese; so you’re probably pretty used to reading about people ripping off music and getting sued for it. Well this might still shock your lawsuit-jaded self: in 2002 the composer Mike Batt made a six-figure, out-of-court settlement for infringing on John Cage’s 1952 work, 4′33″.

Yes, that 4′33″. The silent one.

It started when Batt and his band The Planets released a crossover classical (I hate that term) album called Classical Graffiti. Apparently Batt wanted to separate out the slightly differently styled tracks towards the end, and thought it would be fun to do this with a track called “One Minute Silence (after Cage)”. This was credited to Batt/Cage.

Shortly after the album was released (and went to number one in the UK classical charts) Mike was contacted by Peters Edition, the publisher of Cage’s work demanding one-quarter of the royalties from the sale of the song.

They argued over this for a while - interestingly provoking the kind of discussion which Cage had originally intended when he first performed the piece: does it truly qualify as a work? If not, why? There was even a side-by-side concert performance of the two pieces in London, so that the, errr, differences could be clarified.

Eventually, Batt settled out of court for an undisclosed six-figure sum. However, he indicated that Peters had acknowledged they probably didn’t have much of a case, and he was donating the money out of respect for John Cage, to the John Cage Trust.

I suppose the real issue wasn’t so much the copying of silence (otherwise there’d be a hell of a lot more lawsuits…) but the fact that Batt credited Cage as a writer. Still, you would hope that Peter’s would have had a bit more of an open mind. That’s probably way too high an expectation for the music-suing business of today.

Incidentally, Batt ended up re-registering the track using his pseudonym “Clint Cage”. Also incidentally, Batt was the guy who came up with the theme tune to the Wombles, as well as the music for the famous Art Garfunkel “Bright Eyes” track in Watership Down.

Out of The Musical Loop

In Baltimore I didn’t have any music for five days. Nothing. My mp3 player was left back beside the way to slow computer on my desk in the lab, as I had apparently consumed far more Dead Guy Ale (which is delicious, but surprisingly alcoholic) then required to remember to grab it. Then there was about a fifteen minute window to drive my girlfriend back home and get back to my place for the lab crew to pick me up for the drive down 81.

Well, anyway, the point was that I didn’t have any music. I had Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2 running through my head all through the conference. I was tip-tapping the timpani at the end of the first movement through all the inappropriate lectures on k this and c that and DNA, RNA and what-have-you. There were glimpses of the late Beethoven string quartets flittering around the freshly daylit room when my eyes opened, but no satisfaction - nothing more tangible than in-head echoing.

And when I got back it seemed more distant, instead of drawing me directly back in. The music was disappointed with my absence and won’t give me attention until I give it some. Seriously though, despite the painful faffing around with words there’s truth in them there sentencing. It’s hard to get back sometimes. There are off patches, weeks where I want to listen to the birds and the kids and the wind while I am walking into work, instead of Beethoven.

John Cage was onto something, I think…

I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece… for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have published. At one performance… the second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium.

No matter how engaging, how beautiful nor how directly music speaks to you, the outside world is always stronger. The balance of both is the ideal.