4'33" Revisited

Well, it’s confession time. Most of my blook, Life, Death and Iguanas, is true. Adjusted, perhaps, filtered necessarily through my eyes and viewpoint, but true. If I didn’t tell you the whole story, well, sorry. No author does….

I did, I think, completely invent one chapter. And I say “I think” because, after reading the chapter numerous times, it now seems real to me. I needed something light, something funny. Comic relief after a chapter in which my brother John had forced the fact that I was suicidal out of me.

And there were, in fact, many light moments. The thirteen-lined squirrel—or whatever it was, and however we punctuated the beast—did exist. I did greet Franny one morning by saying, “good morning, Mother, how’s the dying going?” (And I can still hear Johnny yelping, “Jesus, Marc!”)

And yes, I do remember having a silly conversation on the porch. But what in God’s name were we talking about?

I settled on John Cage’s 4'33"—a piece which, technically, can’t be played. Rather it’s done, performed, or possibly just rendered. Written in 1952, Cage wrote a composition in which not one note is played—the piece consists entirely of the ambient sounds: the creaking of the chairs, the clearing of the throats, the whirl of air conditioner vents or heating units.

But what do I know; maybe it can be played. For, in fact, I have just viewed the clip below. And either the pianist is a wonderful actor, or he truly believes that he’s doing something. (Love the way he opens and closes the piano lid to indicate the movements…)

Well, the pianist appears to be taking it all seriously. Cage did too. Here’s Wikipedia:

In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work.

Wikipedia goes on to say:

4′33″ is an example of automaticism. (Author’s note—I’m happy to observe the red squiggle the computer has just put on the word “automaticism.” So it’s not just me!) Since the Romantic Era composers have been striving to produce music that could be separated from any social connections, transcending the boundaries of time and space. In automaticism, composers wish to completely remove both the composers and the artist from the process of creation. This is motivated by the belief that what we think of as "self-expression" is really just an infusion of the art with the social standards that we have been subjected to since birth. Therefore, the only way to achieve truth is to remove the artist from the process of creation. Cage achieves that by employing chance (e.g. use of the I Ching, or tossing coins) to make compositional decisions. In 4′33″, neither artist nor composer has any impact on the piece, so that Cage has no way of controlling what ambient sounds will be heard by the audience.[9]

Well, that’s interesting. I wonder, as a writer, if I could buffalo a significant percent of the intelligentsia into believing that a blank computer screen was my most important work. Or maybe, in fact, I should establish myself as major in every medium. For 100 bucks, I could frame a blank canvas, thus catapulting me to fame in the visual arts. An empty pedestal, or perhaps one with a chunk of untouched marble. Move over, Michelangelo! An empty stage, or perhaps one where ladies in pink tutus amble about. I’ve just blasted past Balanchine!

Well, I wrote the chapter pretty much in that vein. And it was funny, I think. It worked. And at one point, I stuck these words in my dead mother’s mouth: “If I sit for four minutes and whatever it is in silence—and I frequently do, you know—have I infringed on copyright?”

Well, we have our answer.

Quite possibly.

I know this now because I ran into a great blog: classicalconvert.com. And there, in a post entitled “The Stupidest Music Lawsuit Ever—Infringing on Cage’s 4’33”” I got the full dope on a settlement made by Mike Batt with Peters Edition, the publisher of Cage’s work.

Batt, apparently, does popular music; he’s got a band called The Planets (which, come to think of, the Estate of Gustav Holst might want to sniff into). And they did a crossover album, which soared to number one in the UK classical charts. One of the pieces on the album was called “One Minute Silence (after Cage)”

I don’t have to tell you, do I?

What I do think is funny is that, as part of the legal proceeding, they did back-to-back performances of both pieces, in order to note similarities and differences.

Well, Peters admitted that they didn’t have much of a case. But Batt settled out of court, wrote a six-figure check out of respect for Cage to the John Cage Trust.

Note to Peters—don’t even think it. Don’t have that kind of money….