4'33''

The Große Fuge astonishes by the density and diversity of notes flying past. Worlds away is 4’33” by John Cage (1912-1992), which takes its polemical stance as non-music. Cage delved deeply into Eastern philosophy and was a recognized “father figure” of artists who gravitated to his iconoclastic genius. He thought and wrote extensively about silence, which is the yin to sounding music’s yang. Above all, he forced a reconsideration of sounds rather than music, of sounds in the world that did not need to carry intentional meaning and were not produced by the performers. He had no reservations about making audiences uncomfortable. He encouraged—even challenged—people to discover an openness, a receptiveness that was not common in concert settings. Simply put, Cage pursued Zen in sound. He realized that experiencing true silence was one of the most difficult tasks facing any human being, possibly far harder than creating music. It may sound glib, but Cage lobbied for the ambient sounds of the world in which we live, reminding us that nature, society, biological processes, and much more could be listened to with a careful and attentive ear. It is those sounds that we are forced to embrace in 4’33”.

(c) Jason Stell