If I may have 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of your time...

[stevel]

Originally Posted by reith

I'm surprised that Silence is the only Cage piece that has come under fire. Fontana Mix is just as contraversial.

Steve, I think that trying to define music is a lost cause. It seems to be a consensus, much as any of the "creative" arts. Perhaps we need new terms.

I think 4'33'' is the most well known amongst your "usual" musicians, listeners, and even non-interested parties. Even a non-musician can debate the validity of a silent composition, blank canvas, non-existent sculpture, and so on as art.

Fontana Mix (and really, most any other Cage work) is pretty much unknown to the general music public (Music of Changes might be the next most popular).

I know you've been watching some Merce Cunningham so don't let that cloud your judgement!

I don't really want to define music as much as I want to have a definiton that's not exclusionary based on preferences, prejudices, etc.

Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by ttw

There's a nice recording by Music Minus All.

Really? I haven't heard it.

Steve

[stevel]

Don't laugh but I recall a cafe that had a 45* on its juke box with nothing recorded on it so you could buy a few pence worth of silence, the irony being that it wasn't totally silent. A double irony if it lasted 4'33"... a coincidence if it did, I'm sure!

*for the very young: an old-style plastic gramophone record that rotated at 45rpm - used for pop songs, you could get maybe 5 mins of music/silence on it.

Damn Reith, you must be older than dirt!

In seriousness, Steve, "music" is one of those probably undefinable abstract nouns. It exists in the ears of the beholder. I'd prefer it to be called sonic or aural art these days. The same has happened in all the media, sometimes in combination. I look at what passes for "art" in our Tate Modern and... it's crap (sometimes literally) in my view.

Your last sentence here is my point though. Crap? Says who? You? You say "what passes for art". Can I be frank here (surely you can be Frank Steve, and don't call me Shirley or Frank):

Look at what passes as "music":

It's not what you think I'm going to say. Not 4'33".

SR71. Britney Spears. Is that music. Of course it is. Is it any good. I don't think so.

There are major record companies making millions off the public, pulling the wool over their eyes with this so-called talent which is nameless, faceless, replacable imitations of some "pop" ideal.

Everyone wants to complain when someone putas a crucifix in a jar of pee. Have you ever heard most of the "Christian Rock" - if that doesn't put a crucifix in a pile of crap I don't know what does.

But we call all of that music!

People want to say 4'33'' and pieces like that aren't music and they are glaring attempts by an artist to fool the "art society" into thinking that what they've created is the next big thing. Hello, turn on the TV or Radio - it's the same exact thing. In fact, the general stupid listening public are probably less informed (or even concerned) to see through the charlatainism is BIG RECORD INC. than are the art community about deciding whether that type of work (scatological included) is meritorius.

In other words, I far more trust a person who says 4'33 is good music than I do someone that says half the country songs (or any genre for that matter) are. In fact, in most cases (especially with young kids in the house) 4'33' of silence is even better than Beethoven at this point!

So the next time anyone wants to say that some modern piece of music isn't music, I want you to think for a second about all of the other music of such dastardly quality out there and consider it in that light. What's the point of 4'33"? Well gee, what's the point of cut 26 off the latest J Lo album (nothing other than to make the CD seem like it's actually worth the 35.00 they're asking for it since it has SOOOO MANY songs).

The point of that music is to make money for someone.

At least Cage did it to make people think.

A much better pursuit in my book :-)

Steve

[reith]

Originally Posted by stevel

Damn Reith, you must be older than dirt!

Yeah right! When I was young (he says, resting his sax on his zimmer frame) records were carved out of slate and played with pine needles stuck in a gourd. Presley would have kept em busy for hours turning out his discs.


I have more to say, Steve (so you won't excape this light) but I have to arise early in the morning, so until later...

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by reith

. ... . (4'33")

LOL - well said.

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by stevel

There are major record companies making millions off the public, pulling the wool over their eyes with this so-called talent which is nameless, faceless, replacable imitations of some "pop" ideal.

...

The point of that music is to make money for someone.

At least Cage did it to make people think.

A much better pursuit in my book :-)

Steve

Agreed, the general public has unfortunately gotten way too lazy and seems to want more things spoon-fed to them. They'd rather turn on the radio / TV and have someone else tell them what's good for them.

That's why the Britney Spears and J. Lo's of the world are popular - not because of substance (duh), but because of the record companies coercing the pop radio stations into playing their CD's in high rotation.

If it's not in 4/4, compressed into a wall of noise, under 4 minutes and it doesn't have a "marketable" face attached to it, then it won't see the light of day on Viacom-owned radio stations ... and the general public will be oblivious to its' existence.

I'm optimistic that things might slowly be changing with the Internet as the larger record companies still don't know how to leverage that. The ready and quick access to such a large variety of "audible art" from such a wide variety of sources is promising. You do see the "pushing" from the labels on iTunes and Rhapsody, but it is fairly easy for people to explore and get past all the flashy "New, new, new" things...

more thoughts, but I hear little feet that are supposed to be in bed...

Dave

[some guy]

I hate that I'm contributing to this post after Reith's bit of genius. You just can't nod off for a second with him around, can you? Damn you for being funnier than I!!

But here is my lame response:

But, if you hear a machine running as music, or even musical, it is YOU the listener who is hearing it that way. YOU intend to hear that succession of sounds in time as being musical, or possibly even music.

So in a sense, this means ANYTHING can be music if a person chooses to hear it as music.

Yes.

[Thorolf]

Originally Posted by some guy

Yes.

Not necessarily. A mere act of listening doesn’t necessarily mean that what is listened to is music. That said, anything—doesn’t even have to be sound—might trigger a musical experience through assosiation. This doesn’t mean that a picture of a former love on that party where they played that particular song, or the smell of some perfume she wore, is music.

Regards

[some guy]

I would never call listening "mere." Hearing, sure, but listening? There's nothing mere about it. And turning sound into music by listening is not about triggering at all. The sound of say rain against the screen window with cars honking (yeah, I'm in Manhattan this second) doesn't trigger a musical experience; it is a musical experience. If it triggered anything, it might trigger some nostalgia for some rainy day past, when the world was fresh and love was young and so forth.

[reith]

Originally Posted by some guy

I hate that I'm contributing to this post after Reith's bit of genius. You just can't nod off for a second with him around, can you? Damn you for being funnier than I!!

Hey, well thank you for that but no-o-o, not really....just a glancing remark. Point is, did you play it?

The results I got were interesting, barely a few seconds passed before I got "Are you all right?" from the kitchen. When I couldn't answer I received a visit and further chat. Then a look of enlightenment and retreat before my next visitor arrived wanting to ask about bikes.