4'33 is never going away

John Cage wrote a lot of music using a variety of unconventional techniques but the piece that he will likely always be most famous for is the untitled piece usually known as 4'33. The piece, for no particular designated instrument or ensemble, is in three movements. The only detail in the score is the duration of each movement. Added together the total duration of the three movements comes to 4'33. It was premiered on piano by pianist David Tudor in 1952. The Wikipedia article linked above provides some context on the history of the score and performances, historical predecessors and context and so on. I have seen the Peters edition of the score, sometimes referred to as the First Tacet Edition because the instruction to the performer(s) for each movement is simply "tacet" or remain silent.

Cage has made a number of observations about the piece over the years. An early concept seemed to imply that the function was to insert three or four minutes of silence into a stream of music. He contemplated selling it to the Muzak corporation. A later conception was that the silence of the performer would simply reveal that there is no true silence--the space would be filled by the sounds of nature or even the breathing and heartbeat of the listeners, not to mention birds, passing cars, etc.

I say that the piece is never going away because it has utility in all sorts of dimensions. The conductor Kiril Petrenko used it to protest the closing of orchestra concerts in Germany:

I notice that even though he seems to be conducting from the score, he rushes the performance which is well under four minutes. Must have been the excitement of the moment.

One of the most interesting aspects of the piece from an aesthetic or semantic point of view is that it has potentially unbounded meaning or significance. Every time you play a note or a chord or a rhythm you are defining and hence restricting the expression. But the emptiness of this piece is like the emptiness of the open sky: it is open to all possibilities, all thoughts, all moods and atmospheres.

The contrast of this piece with almost all others highlights the busyness of so much music, the flurries of notes and rhythms, dashing helter-skelter from one moment to the next. This piece is one moment (or three moments) of silence which reveals to us the noisiness of our usual environment. It is like a meditation on silence--or anything, really. But a meditation, not an endeavour or pursuit. It pursues nothing, states nothing and implies nothing. And in doing so it implies anything and everything.

No, we will not be getting rid of this piece any time soon. Another performance, this time on piano by David Tudor:

Very different interpretation, don't you think?