How does the piece “4′33″ remain a masterpiece?

John Cage's 1952 work, 4′33″, has been a landmark for artists, composers and thinkers from all walks of life, spawning conceptual works, experimental gestures and even an iPhone app. But, even with almost everyone agreeing on its importance, misunderstandings about the work proliferate.
On the one hand, 4′33″ is sometimes affectionately called Cage's “silent piece,” as the work asks its performer to stop using his instrument for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Cage himself used this terminology to describe the work, only to later contradict it, stating that 4′33″ was not silent. Why is 4'33 still so important? Find out in this article.

Who was John Cage?

Cage is today considered one of the main experimental composers, having changed the very definition of what constitutes music. Often, his pieces do not require musicians to play instruments in the traditional sense, producing deliberately inharmonious sounds. And unlike many musical scores, which are designed to produce easily repeatable melodies, Cage's are more open-ended, making few performances alike. In addition to making experimental music during the post-war era, Cage was an amateur mycologist, regularly picking mushrooms for his own use and making art about them.

What is 4′33″?

There are multiple scores for 4′33″, which was first performed by pianist David Tudor in 1952 in Woodstock, New York. The play's initial score has been lost, although it is thought to have used conventional musical notation. Another version, produced by Cage shortly afterwards, interpreted the work using a succession of vertical lines. "1 page = 7 inches = 56 seconds", notes the score, which is now owned by the Museum of Modern Art. For a total of 273 seconds, the 4′33″ performer is expected to play absolutely nothing. MoMA’s score for 4′33″ notes that the piece is “for any instrument or combination of instruments.” Theoretically, anyone can perform it, as the piece does not require inherent musical knowledge.

How did Cage come up with the idea for 4′33″?

Over the years, Cage has repeatedly said that the play was inspired by the "White Paintings" of Robert Rauschenberg, a group of works begun in the early 1950s that contained no color. These works appeared to be simply white monochromes, but, according to Cage, they were more than that: "The white paintings were airports for lights, shadows and particles." At least one of the "White Paintings" was on display during a 1951 performance of a Cage play at Black Mountain College, the North Carolina art school known for promoting a variety of experimental practices, with teachers including Cage, Merce Cunningham , Josef and Anni Albers, and students such as Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Ruth Asawa. Cage also said he had been inspired by a visit to an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Rooms of this type are designed to produce total silence, but when Cage visited, he said he heard a high-pitched sound. He was told that the sound was actually being produced by his own nervous system.

How is chance important for 4′33″?

By the time Cage conceived 4′33″, he had already become interested in opening music and art to chance, welcoming unplanned events within loosely defined parameters. He had, for example, created a group of works for prepared pianos, in which he altered the instruments so that they emit unusual sounds with some degree of unpredictability. During the 273 seconds of 4′33″, no one knows what sounds will be heard - which is exactly the point. Working under the sign of Zen Buddhism and the artist Dada Marcel Duchamp, Cage was fascinated by randomness, which went against the logic that works of art should remain fixed and unchanged. "A performance of a composition that is indeterminate in its performance is necessarily unique," he said in 1958. "It cannot be repeated. When performed a second time, the result is different from what it was." Although the 4′33″ score remains the same, it continues to produce countless iterations because of what happens around it. Cage's composition is therefore responsive to the vagaries of life itself.

Is 4′33″ really a “quiet piece”?

The instrumentalist never produces any sounds during the course of the piece's performance, so it is silent in that sense. But that doesn't mean that everything beyond the venue where it is performed remains silent, so by design there will still be some noise even if it isn't produced on stage. Cage had this to say: "The play is not actually silent (there will never be silence until death comes, which never happens); it is full of sound, but sounds I had not thought of in advance, which I hear for the first time at the at the same time as others hear." And later, he would add: "See, there are always sounds... Let me put it this way. We could have a play in which a participant would come, and, when asked, would say that the occasion was marked by certain sounds. Another One person might say he didn't remember any sound. There was something else. But both would agree that a performance of music had taken place."

How was the first 4′33″ performance?

In 1952, when Tudor performed the work at Woodstock, he raised his hands to the music stand of a piano and then proceeded to touch no keys and press no pedals. A local artist reportedly said, "Good people of Woodstock, let's run these people out of town." The piece continued to be "played" in a similar manner in the following years, as many watched in bewilderment and fascination. "LOOK, NO HANDS! AND IT'S 'MUSIC,'" read a New York Times headline about a 1954 performance of the work by Tudor in Manhattan.

How is 4′33″ considered today?

Kyle Gann, a composer who has written a book about the play, noted that Cage's own mother once asked, "Don't you think John went too far this time?" But Gann himself said that the work had a "Promethean" impact in the following years. A variety of artists, from Brian Eno to Yoko Ono, have made pieces referencing the work, which is still regularly performed today.