the encyclopedic entry of 4′33″

Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

Background and influences

In 1951, Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than reflecting them as echoes. They are also externally sound-proofed. Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but he wrote later, "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.

There has been some skepticism about the accuracy of the engineer's explanation, especially as to being able to hear one's own nervous system. A mild case of tinnitus might cause one to hear a small, high-pitched sound. It has been asserted by acoustic scientists that, after a long time in such a quiet environment, air molecules can be heard bumping into one's eardrums in an elusive hiss (0 dB, or 20 micropascals). Whatever the truth of these explanations, Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." The realisation as he saw it of the impossibility of silence led to the composition of 4'33″.

Cage wrote in "A Composer's Confessions" (1948) that he had the desire to "compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to the Muzak Co. It will be 4 [and a half] minutes long — these being the standard lengths of 'canned' music, and its title will be 'Silent Prayer'. It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and shape or fragrance of a flower. The ending will approach imperceptibly."

Another cited influence for this piece came from the field of the visual arts. Cage's friend and sometimes colleague Robert Rauschenberg had produced, in 1951, a series of white paintings, seemingly "blank" canvases (though painted with white house paint) that in fact change according to varying light conditions in the rooms in which they were hung, the shadows of people in the room and so on. This inspired Cage to use a similar idea, as he later stated, "Actually what pushed me into it was not guts but the example of Robert Rauschenberg. His white paintings… when I saw those, I said, 'Oh yes, I must. Otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'." Cage's musical equivalent to the Rauschenberg paintings uses the "silence" of the piece as an aural "blank canvas" to reflect the dynamic flux of ambient sounds surrounding each performance; the music of the piece is natural sounds of the players, the audience, the building, and the outside environment.

Cage was not the first composer to conceive of a piece consisting solely of silence. One precedent is "In futurum", a movement from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano by Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff. Written in 1919, Schulhoff's meticulously notated composition is made up entirely of rests. Cage was, however, almost certainly unaware of Schulhoff's work. Another prior example is Alphonse Allais's Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man, written in 1897, and consisting of nine blank measures. Allais's composition is arguably closer in spirit to Cage's work; Allais was an associate of Erik Satie, and given Cage's profound admiration for Satie, the possibility that Cage was inspired by the Funeral March is tempting. However, according to Cage himself, he was unaware of Allais's composition at the time (though he had heard of a 19th-century book that was completely blank).

Performances

The premiere of the three-movement 4'33″ was given by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, at Woodstock, New York as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. The audience saw him sit at the piano and, to mark the beginning of the piece, close the keyboard lid. Some time later he opened it briefly, to mark the end of the first movement. This process was repeated for the second and third movements. The piece had passed without a note being played—in fact without Tudor (or anyone else) having made any deliberate sound as part of the piece. Tudor timed the three movements with a stopwatch while turning the pages of the score.

Richard Kostelanetz suggests that the very fact that Tudor, a man known for championing experimental music, was the performer, and that Cage, a man known for introducing unexpected non-musical noise into his work, was the composer, would have led the audience to expect unexpected sounds. Anybody listening intently would have heard them: while the performer produces no deliberately musical sound, there will nonetheless be sounds in the concert hall (just as there were sounds in the anechoic chamber at Harvard). It is these sounds, unpredictable and unintentional, that are to be regarded as constituting the music in this piece. The piece remains controversial to this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music.

The title and therefore the length of 4'33″ is in fact not designated by its score. The instructions for the work indicate that it consists of three movements, for each of which the only instruction is "tacet," indicating silence on the part of the performer or performers. The title of the piece in each performance is determined by the length of silence chosen. Cage chose the length of the famous premiere performance by chance methods using I Ching models, the results of which happen to coincide with average lengths of pieces of so-called 'canned' music, where the applicability of those models is valid too, because both fields are dealing in some or the other way with the attentiveness and concentration abilities of humans. There is no evidence supporting the claim that Cage chose the length deliberately.

On January 16, 2004, at the Barbican in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the UK's first orchestral performance of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and one of the main challenges was that the station's emergency backup systems are designed to switch on whenever apparent silence (dead air) is detected. They had to be switched off for the sole purpose of this performance.

Recordings

4'33″ has been recorded on several occasions: Frank Zappa recorded it as part of A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, on the Koch label, 1993; in 2002, James Tenney performed 4'33" at Rudolf Schindler's historic Kings Road House in celebration of the work's 50th anniversary. A recording of an orchestral version of 4'33″ by the BBC Symphony Orchestra was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in January 2004; this performance may have been simultaneously televised on BBC Four; it was made available on iFilm in 2006.

A tongue-in-cheek version was recorded by the staff of the UK Guardian newspaper on 2004-01-16. A (probably fictitious) story tells that a 7" vinyl version of 4'33″ was at one time popular on the juke boxes of a number of bars, as it gave customers a relief from an otherwise relentless soundtrack of rock and roll.

A performance of 4'33″ was broadcast on Australian radio station ABC Classic FM, as part of a program exploring "sonic responses" to Cage's work. A mocking, jazz version (not following the score) was performed as part of The Fast Show on BBC.

The BBC series The Fast Show recorded a jazz version of 4'33″ as part of their Jazz Club segment. The fact that their version only lasted roughly 90 seconds was put down to the need for artistic expression and thrusting as part of jazz, and that any piece of music was open to an artist's interpretation.

Italian electronic/experimental producer Dj Batman released a cover of 4'33″ via BeatsDigital.com on March 4th, 2008. In this case, silence was entirely computer-generated.

References by other artists

Several other artists have paid tribute to Cage's work. Some of the more notable include the following:

The anarchist punk band Crass alluded to 4'33″ with their song "They've Got a Bomb", which includes a silent gap in the music. The band has acknowledged the influence of Cage, and said that the idea of the space in the song, when performed live, was to suddenly stop the energy, dancing and noise and allow the audience to momentarily "confront themselves" and consider the reality of nuclear war (a film projected onto a screen behind the band continued to show images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). A studio recording of the song appears on their 1978 The Feeding of the 5000 LP. Early pressings of the album also feature two minutes of silence entitled "The Sound of Free Speech." The gap was left by a poem called "Asylum" that workers at the record plant refused to press.

Ciccone Youth, the collaboration between members of Sonic Youth and Mike Watt, included a track titled "(silence)" on The Whitey Album that consists of 63 seconds of just that. Sonic Youth is also known for experimental music and have covered other pieces by John Cage on their SYR release Goodbye 20th Century.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono also showed a Cage influence, especially that of 4'33″, on their 1969 collaboration Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions. This is heard mainly on tracks 3 & 4: "Baby's Heartbeat" and "Two Minutes Silence", which are both tributes to the memory of their unborn son John Ono Lennon II, who died in a miscarriage.

In July 2002 composer Mike Batt (best known for being behind the 1970s novelty/children's act The Wombles) had charges of plagiarism filed against him by the estate of John Cage after crediting his track "A Minute's Silence" as being written by "Batt/Cage". Batt initially vowed to fight the suit, even going so far as to claim that his piece is "a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." Batt told The Independent that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Batt eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed six figure sum in September 2002.

Covenant closed their 2000 album United States of Mind with four minutes and 33 seconds of silence entitled "You Can Make Your Own Music."

Wilco included a song entitled "Blank" on their 1999 album Summerteeth, consisting of thirty seconds of silence.

Rap artist MC Paul Barman proclaims in his song 'Excuse You' from the Paullelujah album that he "…can rock the mic to "Silence" by John Cage with the arty flavor".

Experimental/Noise act Wolf Eyes included an untitled track on their 2004 album Burned Mind of silence that lasts exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Australian rock band Karnivool included a track titled "Omitted for Clarity" on their album Themata consisting solely of silence.

Japanese noise rock duo Ruins included a song entitled 0'33" on their 1995 album Hyderomastgroningem

Seattle sludge-rock pioneers Melvins included their tribute to Cage, entitled "Nothing", on a 7-inch compilation record called Son of Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!. This record was released on Slap-a-Ham Records in 1992. In keeping with the compilation's theme of songs clocking in at 30 seconds or less, "Nothing" consists of 30 seconds of silence.

Composer and violinist Alexei Aigui from Moscow, Russia named his orchestra Ensemble 4′33″.

4'33" No. 2

In 1962, Cage wrote 0'00", which is also referred to as 4'33" No. 2. The directions originally consisted of one sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence.

The second performance added four new qualifications to the directions: "the performer should allow any interruptions of the action, the action should fulfill an obligation to others, the same action should not be used in more than one performance, and should not be the performance of a musical composition."