4'33"

[Spatula]

.

[BoliverAllmon]

indeed

[Spatula]

shhh!  be vevy vevy quiet...     

[shasta]

.

I would execute this piece as follows: Long red strapless dress, hair up, hands folded quietly in lap, eyes closed. 4'33" placed to bridge the dark (maybe the Rach Corelli) with the funky (maybe a Ginastera or Mompou or Ives).

How would you guys do 4'33"?

[Brian Healey]

Man, 4'33" is such old news. I know that piece backward and forward. I can literally play it in my sleep!

[DarkWind]

It's a pretty complicated piece.

Ligeti wrote a parody on it, called 0'00". Shortest piece on the world, performable by anyone.

[Spatula]

It's a pretty complicated piece.

Ligeti wrote a parody on it, called 0'00". Shortest piece on the world, performable by anyone.

are you sure?! 

[abe]

what is this song??? dang it, its the second time i've seen 4'33" and i dont know what it is!!! and my brother's practicing the appasionata and its drilling into my brain!!!@!@#!!1

[Brian Healey]

For Abe, since he doesn't seem to be in on the joke:

A Brief History of 4'33'':

In 1952, John Cage premiered a "piano work" that he called 4'33''. During the concert, the performer (I believe it was somebody else besides Cage) walked onstage, lifted the key cover, and sat down at the piano. Rather than playing, he(or she) proceeded to sit motionless, while the audience started to grow restless and confused as the minutes of silence passed. After exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds (hence the name), the performer stood up, closed the key cover, and walked offstage. Performance over.

The whole thing was an aleatoric experiment (aleatory refers to music that is "left to chance"), where the noise of the audience growing restless was the actual music.

[Spatula]

SHH! BRIAN AND ABE! (now I'm screaming for you guys to be QUIET!)

The Spatula is performing!

[Spatula]

My critique of Spatula's rendition of 4'33".

There was silence at first.  The pianist walked on stage as applause gathered to warm him.  He said down, adjusted the bench, and rotated his shoulders as if they were to be flexed.  He also brought the sheet music with him! 

Alas, the concert hall quiet, silence filled the room. 

All assudden, some one in the audience jumped out and said, "Indeed,"... some shhhising erupted but was quickly silenced.  Another audience jumped out and said, "I would execute this piece as follows: Long red strapless dress, hair up, hands folded quietly in lap, eyes closed. 4'33" placed to bridge the dark (maybe the Rach Corelli) with the funky (maybe a Ginastera or Mompou or Ives).

How would you guys do 4'33"?

Again the shhesh erupted from the crowd. 

The pianist was started to get annoyed, but then turned the tables to observe the "music" of chatter with the following tune, 'Man, 4'33" is such old news. I know that piece backward and forward. I can literally play it in my sleep!, another replied with, It's a pretty complicated piece.

Ligeti wrote a parody on it, called 0'00". Shortest piece on the world, performable by anyone.

Indeed the atmosphere was lost, silence was but a moment of time. 

Even the pianist himself became involved with the commotion and talking to the audience with, "Are you sure?"

 More chattering came up with comments such as, "what is this song??? dang it, its the second time i've seen 4'33" and i dont know what it is!!! and my brother's practicing the appasionata and its drilling into my brain!!!@!@#!!1", and
For Abe, since he doesn't seem to be in on the joke:

A Brief History of 4'33'':

In 1952, John Cage premiered a "piano work" that he called 4'33''. During the concert, the performer (I believe it was somebody else besides Cage) walked onstage, lifted the key cover, and sat down at the piano. Rather than playing, he(or she) proceeded to sit motionless, while the audience started to grow restless and confused as the minutes of silence passed. After exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds (hence the name), the performer stood up, closed the key cover, and walked offstage. Performance over.

The whole thing was an aleatoric experiment (aleatory refers to music that is "left to chance"), where the noise of the audience growing restless was the actual music.

Finally the pianist was p'oed even though he was also talking yelling, "SHH! BRIAN AND ABE! (now I'm screaming for you guys to be QUIET!)

The Spatula is performing! "...

Indeed, this must have been the most noisiest performances of the 4'33".

[Shagdac]

I wonder if anyone has every tried to enter it as a competition piece?
Can you just see the judges???


    (at least you wouldn't have to worry about forgetting the score)!

[faulty_damper]

But they might penalize you for playing it in 4'34''.

[janice]

My critique of Spatula's rendition of 4'33".

There was silence at first.  The pianist walked on stage as applause gathered to warm him.  He said down, adjusted the bench, and rotated his shoulders as if they were to be flexed.  He also brought the sheet music with him! 

Alas, the concert hall quiet, silence filled the room. 

All assudden, some one in the audience jumped out and said, "Indeed,"... some shhhising erupted but was quickly silenced.  Another audience jumped out and said, "I would execute this piece as follows: Long red strapless dress, hair up, hands folded quietly in lap, eyes closed. 4'33" placed to bridge the dark (maybe the Rach Corelli) with the funky (maybe a Ginastera or Mompou or Ives).

And then Shagdac, who is in the audience, jumps up and exclaims "Will ya hurry up?!  I'm hungry.  I could really use a bowl of chili right now".  There is murmuring.  All of a sudden, Ethyl runs out of the auditorium and comes back........

[Spatula]

Let's have another pianist do a virtual performance of the 4'33".

[dlu]

I think it's a masterpiece! Although I wouldn't spend money on a recording of the piece (yes, there are many!). The idea is good but it really is not practical to sit at a piano for 4'33"...OMG!!! I should perform the piece for a competition I am entering!!! They'll think I am crazy!!! (well...i am...)

[Brian Healey]

They will either think you're crazy........or a genius!

probably crazy

[Spatula]

Imagine doing that as an encore to some massive concerto....

Hey, maybe you do deserve the "break". 

[aki]

Yeah, I wonder if you could enter this piece for a competition or something... maybe you can receive a prize for the most special piece chosen.

[faulty_damper]

What's worse is that this piece has seen many transcriptions for other instruments/orchestras.

[Spatula]

HAHAHA OMG!

Yeah lets do the ensemble of 4'33".

I bet if the whole world were to perform this piece at the exact same moment regardless of time zones, we'd have world piece for 4'33".

[DarkWind]

I saw on classicalmidiconnection.com a few arrangements, like for viola and harp, tuba and russian bassoon, but I guess they took them down.

[Spatula]

If someone did the YMCA.

[Tash]

i can play it better!mwahahaha

[Spatula]

This how tash would do the 4'33"

Stand on stage bare naked and sing YMCA, all while performing 4'33" with a macarena music in background. 

Yum...bare naked.   

[Tash]

ewww ymca and macarena please be more tasteful i want elevator music!

[donjuan]

ewww ymca and macarena please be more tasteful i want elevator music!

fine then..."the girl from Ipenema goes walking and..."

[Spatula]

Is there a piece where it is composed ENTIRELY of technique, like scales, chords etc?

[DarkWind]

Etudes?

[donjuan]

Is there a piece where it is composed ENTIRELY of technique, like scales, chords etc?

I think Liszt's paganini etudes have it all, technically. Repeated notes, arpeggios, tremolos, trills, thirds, they require even touch and a quiet hand, single movements over many many keys, martellato touch in some sequences, you name it, they have it!   

[Spatula]

Like there is no melody to it; every note is part of some actual technique used.  Get what I mean?

[Tash]

i'll compose one

[donjuan]

Like there is no melody to it; every note is part of some actual technique used.  Get what I mean?

how boring and machine like! What's the point?

[Spatula]

Like there is no melody to it; every note is part of some actual technique used.  Get what I mean?

how boring and machine like! What's the point?

Well how boring is 4'33"??! 

[donjuan]

Like there is no melody to it; every note is part of some actual technique used.  Get what I mean?

how boring and machine like! What's the point?

Well how boring is 4'33"??! 

hardly boring at all! I would think its entertaining watching the reaction of an audience in such a situation..

[anda]

For Abe, since he doesn't seem to be in on the joke:

A Brief History of 4'33'':

In 1952, John Cage premiered a "piano work" that he called 4'33''. During the concert, the performer (I believe it was somebody else besides Cage) walked onstage, lifted the key cover, and sat down at the piano. Rather than playing, he(or she) proceeded to sit motionless, while the audience started to grow restless and confused as the minutes of silence passed. After exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds (hence the name), the performer stood up, closed the key cover, and walked offstage. Performance over.

The whole thing was an aleatoric experiment (aleatory refers to music that is "left to chance"), where the noise of the audience growing restless was the actual music.

pretty much, except it's written in three parts (33", 2'40", 1'20) and you're supposed to close the lid and open it again between the parts. anyway, it's a good encore (especially if you hate encores as i do) after a big concert (say rachmaninov, brahms or something) - that is, if you have what it takes to do it

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

I love this piece! In 4 minutes and 33 seconds, it is absolutely the most beautiful piece ever written!

[Spatula]

For Abe, since he doesn't seem to be in on the joke:

A Brief History of 4'33'':

In 1952, John Cage premiered a "piano work" that he called 4'33''. During the concert, the performer (I believe it was somebody else besides Cage) walked onstage, lifted the key cover, and sat down at the piano. Rather than playing, he(or she) proceeded to sit motionless, while the audience started to grow restless and confused as the minutes of silence passed. After exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds (hence the name), the performer stood up, closed the key cover, and walked offstage. Performance over.

The whole thing was an aleatoric experiment (aleatory refers to music that is "left to chance"), where the noise of the audience growing restless was the actual music.

pretty much, except it's written in three parts (33", 2'40", 1'20) and you're supposed to close the lid and open it again between the parts. anyway, it's a good encore (especially if you hate encores as i do) after a big concert (say rachmaninov, brahms or something) - that is, if you have what it takes to do it

Haha you start to make precussion sounds with the lid... then perhaps smile away clapping your hands.  That'd cause a few confused faces.

[Lance Morrison]

It's so easy to mock John Cage, but the man truly trancended musical composition....reading the things he wrote really made me question what I define as music, and it taught me that the man was above all not a composer but a musical philosopher. but Cage did actually compose before his trancendence, and though some of it is trite, he actually wrote some damn brilliant compositions, especially the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano.

[Alfonso Van Worden]

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Don´t interrup it!

[Radix]

Maybe he did write some nice pieces. I don't know.  All I know is that a piece like 4'33" is not really a piece of music.  It's what I like to call "a stupid waste of my time," or possibly just "sh*t."

[musik_man]

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Don´t interrup it!

It's been more than 4'33" since Spatula started the thread, so it ended a while ago. 

Maybe he did write some nice pieces. I don't know. All I know is that a piece like 4'33" is not really a piece of music. It's what I like to call "a stupid waste of my time," or possibly just "***."

Just be glad that Cage didn't write 40'33''

It's so easy to mock John Cage, but the man truly trancended musical composition....reading the things he wrote really made me question what I define as music, and it taught me that the man was above all not a composer but a musical philosopher. but Cage did actually compose before his trancendence, and though some of it is trite, he actually wrote some *** brilliant compositions, especially the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano.

What would you recommend for someone who hasn't listened to or read much by Cage?

[jlh]

My old theory professor told me that Cage came to our university to perform a new composition some time back.  Cage, for the performance, started a monologue of very boring and nonsense words that lasted about 45 minutes.  At first the audience was quietly listening, waiting for something to happen worth staying there.  As the minutes passed, some people started stirring, mumbling and walking out of the building.  As more minutes passed, the audience grew louder, and more people left.  The commotion grew to the point where only a few people were left in the audience and the professors were pretty embarrassed to say the least.  After the performance, they apologized to Cage for the audience's behavior.  Cage then told them not to apologise because it's exactly what the point of the piece was.  The music created was entirely performed by the audience, with their mumbling, rustling, noisy seats, doors opening and closing, etc. 

[Skeptopotamus]

i think it would be best performed if every so often you made big motions to make it look as if you were about to start playing and then didnt.

[Lance Morrison]

thanks for the Cage anecdote 

oh dear........I really am by no means a Cage expert, so I feel very inadequate giving any sort of advice..........but his book Silence: Lectures and Writings is a good place to learn what kinds of ideas Cage works with........and really out of the works I've heard, other than the small piano piece In a Landscape, the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano really are a great place to start, especially the $7 cd on Naxos.

However, one must be warned; Cage studied under none other than Arnold Schönberg himself, so the pieces contain their fair share of atonality, but I consider them to be often more accessible than the older composer's works, for he uses dancable rhythms, pentatonic and diatonic scales, and works with timbre so much as to evoke Debussy. This is one of Cage's, if not the most, extensive preparations of the piano, by which I mean the insertion of different objects onto/between the various strings to produce all sorts of different effects.

Cage compared his composition of this work to someone walking along a beach and finding and collecting various kinds of seashells. I think this is a very important work with a timeless quality which kind of answers its own questions; I can't imagine a lot could be done with the prepared piano outside of what Cage did. Many people I know who have no classical music knowledge have been very interested in this music upon hearing it.

So.....I hesitate to recommend it, because I know how people object to atonality; before Charles Ives converted me into a fan of "the emancipation of the dissonance", I found some of the more atonal pieces in this set hard to listen to, however I still found pleasure in the more tonal sections, especially in his use of timbre. Looking back at the pieces now that I like atonality, I find that the more atonal sections give the work a unity which it had before never possessed in my mind. Now that the atonality has integrated itself, I can see clearer how Cage expressed the 9 Hindu emotions throughout the work. I would say to anyone who thinks they might be interested in these pieces, listen to the samples on amazon.com and see what you think. You may find this work isn't for you, or you may discover that it is just perfect.

[willcowskitz]

Cage then told them not to apologise because it's exactly what the point of the piece was.  The music created was entirely performed by the audience, with their mumbling, rustling, noisy seats, doors opening and closing, etc.

I'd be furious if I found out some jerk's been "proving a point" by making me suffer intentionally. Thanks for wasting MY time instead of trying to actually CREATE something.

[Radix]

I'd be furious if I found out some jerk's been "proving a point" by making me suffer intentionally. Thanks for wasting MY time instead of trying to actually CREATE something.

Ditto.