John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!

Subject: John Cage's 4'33" on BBC radio tonight!
From: Ed.
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 01:33 PM

It'll be on at 9.20pm (ish) as part of a live John Cage concert, and is I believe the first radio broadcast of this seminal piece.

If you're outside the UK, there's a webcast. If you happen to miss it, contact me for an mp3 :-)

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: woodsie
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 01:45 PM

This must be the only piece of music that you can listen to on the radio without actually turning it on! - in fact without even having a radio!

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 01:50 PM

I like to close my eyes during this. Just to see what tones I 'hear'. Thanks for the info.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: alanabit
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:01 PM

Probably the only time when you will be able to assert that John Cage either is or isn't on the radio tonight and be right in both cases. I wonder if he wasn't just taking the piss out of music critics. It takes a long time for some folks to realise they've been had!

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:05 PM

Do they ever do encores of this piece?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: John-S
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:17 PM

Where can I get the sheet music ?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,Van
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:20 PM

I can never make up my mind whether I've heard it before or not heard it before.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:24 PM

Does he get PRS royalties?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:27 PM

Mind you I wouldn't object to a loop tape of the work running continuously in supermarkets, shops, restaurants, airports, dentists waiting rooms, etc, etc

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:27 PM

At least he couldn't be sued for copyright infringement.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Cluin
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:34 PM

But you'd better make some noise if you don't want to be.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Ed.
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:39 PM

At least he couldn't be sued for copyright infringement

Oddly enough, you're wrong there, Walking Eagle. Mike Batt had to pay 'a six figure sum' for copying Cage's composition. Click here for more details.

It's a very, very mad world...

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Les from Hull
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 02:55 PM

It just goes to prove that lawyers don't get satire. The money-grubbing bastards! Mike Batt should've sent them a (very) blank cheque.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,Van
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 03:04 PM

I'm with you Harvey - the amount of ambient noise we are surrounded with - even without the background radio and music - is unbelievable. The other day at work the computers crashed and the silence was amazing. We have become used to a continual barrage of extraneous noise which people now believe is the norm. Perhaps sitting listening to silence for 4 minutes 33 seconds isn't such a daft idea after all.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 03:16 PM

Well, at least the tune didn't sound like someone elses!

Serious now. As for sound. I remember when all the planes were grounded around 9/11. The sky was so silent! I looked up at the night sky and saw----sky!

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 06:14 PM

Am I just too stupid to understand this piece, or is it a complete load of codswallop ?? And they had a 'Learned ' discussion on it on radio 4 afterwards with all sorts of pretentious twaddle almost worthy of the tripe they come out with about Modern Art as in meaningless pictures or unmade beds.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 06:21 PM

I always found this went well busking. After the usual kind of jolly stuff for an hour or so I'd get a take-out cup of coffee and a doughnut and do 4'33". The neighbouring shopkeepers often preferred it to Stephen Foster banjo medleys.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 06:45 PM

One of the points is that the environment affect the quality of the aural experience.

Allegedly, at one performance, the backstage workers conducted a very audible conversation, including comments about the artistic value of the piece - Cage was delighted!

Robin

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Ed.
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 07:58 PM

Am I just too stupid to understand this piece, or is it a complete load of codswallop ??

I doubt that you're too stupid, and in a sense codswallop is a fair description, at least of the endless 'intellectual' discussion of it.

Listening to it tonight on BBC4 television, I enjoyed it, and found that it had a certain merit.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 08:34 PM

I was working tonight, [just got in], i listened to it on the car stereo, it was crap.john

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Ed.
Date: 16 Jan 04 - 09:13 PM

You may be right, John. It was better than Queen or Elton John, though.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 01:16 AM

I just heard a brief repeat of this, its still crap.
the words emperors, new and clothes, spring to mind!

maybe i'm to thick to understand this, but i reckon they're taking the piss!

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 01:17 AM

Are there any plans to releae it as a single?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: breezy
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 02:32 PM

thats it?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: breezy
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 02:35 PM

strts now




















































































































































































































































































































thsit



























How was it for you?
Yeah I agree.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: breezy
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 02:37 PM

purility at is best.
I'll go now, bye.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Jim McLean
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 03:25 PM

Take 5, i.e 4.33 + 27.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 07:18 PM

If it hasn't been done already (and I wouldn't be surprised if it has) I'm going to write the greatest novel ever written. It will contain 1,024 blank pages. The critics will debate it for decades. In a few years it will probably be required reading for a sophmore literature class in college. To top that, I will paint the greatest painting ever rendered on canvas - it will consist of, well, you know.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 07:50 PM

You who are claiming to have missed the point, have partly got it. As I said before, that was one of Cage's points. Andy Warhol also said that if one piece is called Art, and another piece that looks indistinguishable from is called not Art, how do we know and what is the point? Warhol went on to make "Art" out of soup can labels, etc.

One of Cage's other points was that the ENVIRONMENT is a serious contributor to the received experience of listening to music. So what happens if we concentrate fully on the ENVIRONMENT to the exclusion of everything else? We get his famous performance piece!

Some will get it, some will not - it took me years to get what the real point of the exercise is...

Robin

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jan 04 - 02:58 PM

The Frame

"The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting literally; for other arts, figuratively - because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.

"You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?

"If John Cage, for instance, says, "I'm putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I'm going to drink carrot juice, and that's my composition," then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. "Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music." After that it's a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it's a guy swallowing carrot juice." --Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book, copyright 1989.

Matter of taste, right Frank. I think it sucks.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 05:20 AM

Does it mean that every time a singer forgets the words and we get a silence, that we should be paying royalties to the John Cage Trust. Then there's all those silent bits between the tracks on recordings - surely those infringe the copyright.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: mooman
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 05:48 AM

Sorry...I didn't get to hear it....

Maybe another time.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,T-boy
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 07:59 AM

You should have taped it for later.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: C-flat
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 09:07 AM

Blank cassette manufacturers should be on their guard against prosecution for selling unlicensed copies.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,M'Grath of Altcar
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 09:21 AM

The sheet music for this piece IS available. Cage's composition was issued on 7 inch vinyl. In this form it acheived some popularity on juke boxes where people can pay for bit of peace and quiet.

We need experiment.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 10:53 AM

I heard a bit of that Radio 4 discussion. If anything, pseuds being "funny" are worse than pseuds being serious.

Actually, I quite like the idea of saying "let's all shut up and listen instead", in a concert, or in any other setting - it's the kind of thing Quakers, and people who've been around Quakers, do in meetings when they are getting over heated. Perhaps that is really what lies behind the Mudcat outages...

But the joke about "here is a composition" rapidly gets very tired indeed.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,guest mick
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 11:31 AM

I travel a lot on Ireland's national buses and I am often disturbed by the noise coming from the bus radio . I know this sounds like a stupid question , but it is serious :If I played a tape of John Cage's piece on headphones at full volume ( I know that sounds even stupider)would I be able to hear the radio above it ?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST,The Stage Manager at work
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 12:30 PM

Mick,

You would hear the racket coming from the bus radio, and that is exactly the point as I understand it.

The piece is not about the silence, but about all the extraneous noises that occur in the concert hall with a few hundred people in it and the musicians doing nothing.

Psychologically humans start to crack up if they are confronted by absolute silence. There is always some background noise.

4'33" was, I am lead to believe, an attempt to get people to actually listen to what was going on around them. Many of us carry preconceived notions about what we are actually hearing, or expect to hear, as our brains attempt to create order from the auditory signals our ears receive.

Considering the sound sewage our ears are bombarded with everyday, any attempt to take stock, and if necessary scream "enough"! is probably a good thing.   I once toured with a muso who carried a small pair of wire cutters in his pocket. He habitually cut seven or eight inches from the cable of any speaker delivering Muzak. I just wish I had the nerve. It needs more of us taking this sort of direct action in my humble.

If 4'33" gets just one or two people to seriously consider what we are ACTUALLY hearing in our daily lives, consciously or unconsciously, then maybe it ain't so ridiculous as it first seems.

It also shows what preconceived notions we have about what we should hear in concert halls....or anywhere else, including buses and supermarkets, for that matter.

Hopefully Mick, 4'33" would motivate you to tell the bus driver to shut the F****g radio up as you, and probably a number of other people on the bus, find it offensive.

Why the hell should we accept hight levels of unpleasant background noise as 'the norm'?

Just a thought!

SM

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: swampy-the-spark
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 03:43 PM

I did hear this the other night and did any one eles notice that flat note after 1min 12 seconds ??

or was that JC's tribute to the folk movement ?

I agree with some of the other posters, in comparasion with some of the c@@p that's played on the radio today it was OK but I guess Mr cage has had the last laugth :>

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Jan 04 - 06:54 PM

The unnamed GUEST above
- good comments about "the frame" - but the exact reverse is what Warhol was about - why do we HAVE to have "the frame" to get us to appreciate the beauty of what is around us? Why is only "ART" beautiful and worthwhile? Of course Zappa was probably being sarcastic and cynical...

Hi "Art"! :-) love your music!

Robin

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: darkriver
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 02:56 AM

Y'know, I heard this about 20 years ago, and when listened to that broadcast, it wasn't anything like the way I remembered it. I was bored this time, but back then it was pretty exciting.

doug aka darkriver

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:56 AM

So much depends on the person performing it. During this latest performance, I felt that the tempo in the first section was far too fast, which meant that the later part really dragged. I also agree with Swampy about the poor intonation.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: M.Ted
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:25 PM

The piece isn't a joke or anything like that, and there really isn't anything to "get", any more than there is something to "get" about any other piece of music.

It is like the "Running Fence" and a lot of other related art projects--if you to ignore the apparent absurdity of the components(and consider that all art is constructed from absurd components), and are open to what happens, you will experience something worthwhile--

There is another side to this as well, which is that if you can't open yourself up to what is happening in this piece --are really open to what happening in Beethoven or Charlie Parker or in that old tape of "All Around My Hat" that you make everyone listen to on every possible occasion?

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Ed.
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:31 PM

Excellently put, M Ted.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 06:08 PM

I just can't get it out of my head.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 06:31 PM

M.Ted is spot on, as ever, as was Guest Stage Manager.

There is something ineffably tedious about uninformed criticism, especially the chuckle-laden, ho-ho-ho, I'm-a-philistine-and-proud-of-it variety.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 08:54 AM

Murray - I think you'd enjoy Jim Moray.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:12 AM

M Ted, I have been to a live performance of 4'33", and I might be willing to admit that there is some point to it when the visual aspect is included. However, I find the idea of "listening" to the work on radio absolutely ridiculous. After all we have nothing tangible to prove that the piece was actually performed. Can you prove that my comments about tempi and intonation were actually a piss-take ?

I have sung in choruses for many relatively avant garde compositions, some I have loved and some I positively hated. At least I think that I could make a pretty good stab at performing 4'33" myself without too much rehearsal or practice - perhaps one of it's redeeming features. I gather that Andre Previn fell out with Cage because he queried whether it made any difference just how expensive a performer he engaged to play it.

There are plenty of pieces of music by Stockhausen and other composers that I would not wish to hear a second time, but at least you can hear them. I was actually at the UK premiere of "Gruppen" which completely overstretched the number of members of the BBC Symph. percussion section (and the space available in the RAH) so was fully in agreement with general comment "Not so much a concert - more an obstacle race". On the other hand give me a chance to sing the Poulenc Gloria (not really avant garde, but composed about the same time) and I'll be there.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: M.Ted
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 12:58 PM

It isn't really a visual piece, Dave--and as to how easy it is, well, as with all pieces of music, is really depends on how well you do it--for instance, it might be a lot harder than you think to get it to come out to 4'33", which, I imagine, is fairly critical--in re-reading my post, I don't see that I said anything at all about your comments on intonation and tempi--you alone would know what your intent was--

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: black walnut
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 04:36 PM

I performed this piece on piano for a music history class, 25 or so years back. Yes, it's better live. Isn't most music better live?

~b.w.

Subject: RE: John Cage's 4'33' on BBC radio tonight!
From: fogie
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:08 AM

It must be interesting conceptual art to generate this amount of discussion, and I'm surprised someone didn't nominate it for the equivalent of the Tate prize. It takes minimalism to new depths, or maybe nothing is intensely dense?