Splendid news! It’s the 73rd anniversary of the premiere of John Cage’s 4'33", guaranteed, even now, to make people very, very angry
Replies
there is a 4'33" app & it's honestly delightful~ you can record your own version & upload it with a pin on a map... then anyone can listen to any of them from all over the world
aug 29, 2025, 1:49 pm • 4 0 • view
The idea is that you listen to the noise around you instead of music, but BBC Symphony Orchestra general manager Paul Hughes said that “mostly what you could hear [at that premiere] was people getting up and walking out”
aug 29, 2025, 9:13 am • 41 5 • view
He was being interviewed about a John Cage Uncaged weekend at the Barbican, which included a performance of the piece broadcast on Radio 3 – which required them to turn off the station’s emergency system which kicks in whenever there’s too much silence
aug 29, 2025, 9:14 am • 37 2 • view
The broadcast does raise a question, though: are you supposed to listen to the ambient noise from the concert hall, or the stuff around you at home? Do two sets of ambient noise make it a completely different work?
aug 29, 2025, 9:14 am • 34 0 • view
Either way, you can still listen yourself and make up your own mind about it. The video is 7'20" – it's the 12" remix* (*It isn’t. I am a child)
aug 29, 2025, 9:15 am • 58 1 • view
One of the intriguing things about Cage’s work, though, is that it has precedents. Erwin Schulhoff’s ‘In Futurum’ is the central movement of a work from 1919 called Five Picturesques. The New Yorker describes most of the piece as “boisterous, clanging chords”, but... well, here is that middle bit
aug 29, 2025, 9:16 am • 19 3 • view
And here’s the sheet music. It’s different to Cage’s: covered in marks, almost all of which are signs for rests, but it’s a page which is *busy* with resting (and the Italian phrase at the top means “the entire song with as much expression and feeling as you like, always, right to the end!”)
aug 29, 2025, 9:17 am • 29 2 • view
Schulhoff was an avant-garde composer with an enthusiasm for jazz and Dada, and the New Yorker says there are “directions that are not merely challenging but downright nonsensical, like the time signatures—3/5 in one hand, 7/10 in the other”. Oh, and the smiley faces are original elements
aug 29, 2025, 9:18 am • 11 0 • view
This is the piece in the context of the whole work, and I can’t help wondering, given when it was written, if the frenetic, choppy bits, contrasting with the calm of In Futurum (and the final movement) aren’t in some way a response to what had been happening from 1914-18
aug 29, 2025, 9:20 am • 10 0 • view
(Mind you, as an aside, this is his Erotic Sonata, which “calls for a female singer to moan orgasmically”, and is also from 1919 – three years before Molly Bloom said “yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”)
aug 29, 2025, 9:20 am • 14 0 • view
Unfortunately, Schulhoff was a Czech Jew, and – what with that, and being artistic, non-conformist, and politically radical – he didn’t survive the *next* world war. He tried to get to Russia (which wasn’t exactly safe for Jews either), but was caught and died (of TB) in prison in 1942
aug 29, 2025, 9:22 am • 12 0 • view
this is literally just someone making counting rests as unnecessarily complicated as possible
aug 29, 2025, 10:49 am • 0 0 • view
I was there. The orchestral version is inferior to that for solo piano. Another piece (where the conductor just moved his arm in a circle, to "represent the passing of time" while the orchestra played three different works simultaneously) was so ludicrous that one violinist just burst out laughing.
aug 29, 2025, 10:32 am • 2 0 • view
LOL
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 am • 0 0 • view
Yes
aug 29, 2025, 1:19 pm • 1 0 • view
My thought exactly. 😄
aug 29, 2025, 1:45 pm • 1 0 • view
www.antiquatedfuture.com/stickers/joh...
aug 29, 2025, 11:10 am • 1 0 • view
Oh, I like that
aug 29, 2025, 11:12 am • 0 0 • view
As someone who used to work in radio, and had an incident where the emergency system did kick in, that makes me panic 😱 (Although if I shelve that, I do love the concept)
aug 29, 2025, 9:57 am • 3 0 • view
Way back in the late sixties I used to get stoned and sit under a tree on the Arts Quad (when the weather permitted, which in Ithaca was not all that often) and read Cage's SILENCE. Well, it was a different time . . .
aug 29, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Thank you for that image of the score. I have often wondered what key 4'33" is in.
aug 29, 2025, 11:09 am • 2 0 • view
They should have put Cage and Yves Klein in a room together and not let them out until they had a satisfactory explanation of the difference between 4'33" and Le Vide.
aug 29, 2025, 9:52 am • 1 0 • view
I like this idea. I've written about Klein, too, if you'll forgive a bit of self-promotion
aug 29, 2025, 10:06 am • 2 0 • view
1) I was at a performance of 4'33" years ago where an elderly gentleman in the audience began singing softly and almost caused a riot between opposing camps. 2) Kyle Gann's book (No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33") is fantastic and highly recommended.
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 am • 11 2 • view
Ah, thank you. I'll have a look at that
aug 29, 2025, 9:30 am • 3 0 • view
There's an "Alex" cartoon I remember... and gosh, here it is! From November 1988: www.alexcartoon.com/index.cfm?ca...
aug 29, 2025, 9:54 am • 4 0 • view
I love Alex, thank you
aug 29, 2025, 10:07 am • 2 0 • view
I liked the extended club mix #Bangin
aug 29, 2025, 9:56 am • 2 0 • view
“The work may… last any length of time.” I’m a 4’33” traditionalist who believes that performances of 4’33” should always last for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Otherwise it’s simply not 4’33”.
aug 29, 2025, 12:33 pm • 2 0 • view
When I read this, I instantly thought of a half hour rendering! Or maybe 433 minutes?
aug 29, 2025, 6:26 pm • 1 0 • view
This reminds me that when I did my avant-garde composers joke skeet a while ago, I avoided Cage because 1) he's more likely than most of these to be known to the general public, and 2) far from being complex, much of Cage's work (as with 4'33") is incredibly simple. bsky.app/profile/robt...
aug 29, 2025, 10:47 am • 1 0 • view
And yet one of today’s big things is mindfulness
aug 29, 2025, 9:43 am • 2 0 • view
Heard it done as a drum solo by Tim Souster's band 0db. The intro explained that this was going to be a traditional performance, divided up into the three sections originally specified, totalling 4' 33". A lot of the audience clearly weren't in on the joke, creating the perfect desired effect.
aug 29, 2025, 11:33 am • 3 0 • view
Splendid
aug 29, 2025, 11:44 am • 1 0 • view
Coincidentally (perhaps), the name Angus MacLise gave to this day on his New Universal Solar Calendar was "Listening": bsky.app/profile/cale...
aug 29, 2025, 12:51 pm • 2 0 • view
one of the most hipster things my wife and I ever did was include 4'33" in the music for our wedding ceremony
aug 29, 2025, 10:26 am • 22 1 • view
as a non-music reader type person is there an indication of what BPM it is? I need to know which genre to slot it into.
aug 29, 2025, 10:31 am • 2 0 • view
There is: have a look at the top left of the second image in the original post.
aug 29, 2025, 11:13 am • 1 0 • view
Sir, I need you to pay attention to the first part of my post where I said I am not a music reader. 😅 Is that 60bpm then?
aug 29, 2025, 11:18 am • 1 0 • view
The one in the second image is "60 crotchets (quarter notes) per half inch". There's timings for the 3 movements too: I - 30 sec, II - 2'23", III - 1'40" There's a slightly different version of the score that gives it in "proportional notation", where it's given as "1 page = 7 inches = 56 seconds"
aug 29, 2025, 11:25 am • 4 0 • view
So: basically not drum'n'bass 😆
aug 29, 2025, 11:25 am • 2 0 • view
I appreciate you taking time to explain, have a lovely day 😎
aug 29, 2025, 11:32 am • 2 0 • view
Genre? Easy listening, surely.
aug 29, 2025, 5:11 pm • 3 0 • view
There's an app, to record your own local performances.
aug 29, 2025, 9:50 am • 0 0 • view
www.dailydot.com/viral-politi...
aug 29, 2025, 10:01 am • 0 0 • view
I can kind of see that 'noise' isn't the same as ambient noise, but... yeah, I think he may have missed something there
aug 29, 2025, 10:04 am • 3 0 • view
If it isn't what it _is_, then it's nothing. I think.
aug 29, 2025, 10:07 am • 1 0 • view
As I'm learning to drive at the moment I play this whenever I'm doing sat nav navigation (it's an element of the test now). So the car thinks I'm playing music and I can just have the navigation instructions played out over the car's speakers.
aug 29, 2025, 9:23 am • 1 0 • view
The only time I heard this performed was at the funeral in The Hague of a cousin who tragically died on an art school trip to NYC. The ‘silence’ was captivating, hauntingly sad, all manner of ambient sounds heard and not heard. The beginning and end marked by a delicate clash of Buddhist cymbals.
aug 29, 2025, 10:03 am • 6 0 • view
Have you heard his Music for Prepared Piano? Banging stuff (often quite literally).
aug 29, 2025, 9:24 am • 4 0 • view
I've heard bits, but don't know it. Will seek out...
aug 29, 2025, 9:30 am • 1 0 • view
There are two cheap Naxos collections knocking around. Vol2 is supposedly the oddest but also possibly the more approachable - sounds like a crazily energetic film score.
aug 29, 2025, 9:34 am • 1 0 • view
The Sonatas and Interludes are wonderful but rather unlike his later works since they were quite tightly composed and left fairly little to chance (mostly the extent to which you depart from his instructions in how to prepare the piano).
aug 29, 2025, 9:33 am • 3 0 • view
YES! I was OBSESSED with 4'33" (and Schoenberg's twelve-tone) during postgrad exploring the synchronicities between image and sound in #experimental #animation. And for that, John Cage shall forever hold a ver special place in my creative psyche! ♡
aug 29, 2025, 11:36 am • 4 0 • view
The death metal cover by Dead Territory is great (and currently has 20K likes - if you were doubting that anyone ever listens to the piece) www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEG...
aug 29, 2025, 10:25 am • 4 0 • view
Fantastic
aug 29, 2025, 10:45 am • 2 0 • view
440 tuning was only standardised globally in 1955 and 4'33" was written in 1952. So should really be performed at 435.
aug 29, 2025, 2:33 pm • 2 0 • view
(I know American and Europe had already standardised on 440 before the 50s. But let's not get too picky)
aug 29, 2025, 2:33 pm • 1 0 • view
Not so interesting, but I once was on Radcliffe & Maconie's The Chain by linking The Kursaal Flyers' Little Does She Know with Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence – because the former was produced by Mike Batt who was apparently sued by John Cage over his parody of 4'33" called One Minute of Silence.
aug 29, 2025, 9:27 am • 1 0 • view
It transpired though to be a big old ruse. Such a cheeky scamp is Mike!
aug 29, 2025, 9:27 am • 1 0 • view
Marvellous. There's also John Lennon's Nutopian International Anthem from Mind Games (three seconds of silence)
aug 29, 2025, 9:33 am • 2 0 • view
Sonic Youth’s The Whitney Album (as Ciccone Youth) has a 1:03 track as tribute- IIRC they did say at one point that it was a cover, but they played it faster.
aug 29, 2025, 10:12 am • 4 0 • view
The album "Giving Up" by Stock, Hausen and Walkman includes several suggested playing orders, one of which ("Wise up") includes a few seconds of silence repeated several times, followed by a single blast of laughter and then more silence.
aug 29, 2025, 9:44 am • 1 0 • view
Lennon also recorded “Two Minutes Silence” with Yoko Ono, and Soundgarden covered it – but only John’s half (according to Chris Cornell they “appreciated the Lennon arrangement so much”). youtu.be/jaSIJrWQeHc
aug 29, 2025, 9:57 am • 3 0 • view
Fabulous! Love the fact it was a donation too
aug 29, 2025, 9:42 am • 1 0 • view
Decades ago I was in a group that recorded an acapella version, which you can hear below. We decided to do it as a Great Joke, but it became surprisingly moving when we actually got in the studio! open.spotify.com/track/2KYXpq...
aug 29, 2025, 2:51 pm • 1 0 • view
And most miss the point altogether. Like those oafs that released CDs of 4’33” of digital silence in the 90s.
aug 29, 2025, 9:21 am • 5 0 • view
How many copies were sold?
aug 29, 2025, 9:28 am • 1 0 • view
I shouldn’t imagine they shifted many. I was in HMV trying to get one of the Mode Cage releases and saw that. Just shook my head in disbelief.
aug 29, 2025, 9:31 am • 1 0 • view
Side note: I am a choir singer, usually big stuff with big orchestras. Genuinely, the best bit of many gigs is the shared silence at the end. Until some utter spong decides to Get In First with their applause and ruins the moment Just wait till the conductor puts their hands down, you pillock
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 am • 12 0 • view
I recently went to a performance of Tchaik 6, and they played it really beautifully and sympathetically. The silence at the end was just starting hanging, as it should, when some idiot said loudly "yes it's finished" to the person sitting next to him, then started clapping. Totally ruined the effect
aug 29, 2025, 9:34 am • 5 0 • view
I hope the rest of the audience took appropriate revenge on the way out? #isthereadoctorinthehouse
aug 29, 2025, 9:36 am • 4 0 • view
Hahahahaha.
aug 29, 2025, 9:37 am • 2 0 • view
What’s wrong with some people?
aug 29, 2025, 9:35 am • 2 0 • view
Absolutely get that. The Stockhausen concerts that I went to always had silence at the beginning and at the end. The CDs sometimes do too.
aug 29, 2025, 9:29 am • 2 0 • view
The best concert silence I have ever encountered was a pillock-free one at the end of a Gerontius we did with Andrew Davis which went on for maybe 2 minutes? Marvellous (Arguably better than the work itself imho)
aug 29, 2025, 9:32 am • 2 0 • view
Out of respect I’ll enjoy a few minutes of quiet reflection.
aug 29, 2025, 10:02 am • 1 0 • view
A good thing to have in one's day!
aug 29, 2025, 10:04 am • 2 0 • view
finally, sheet music I can read
aug 29, 2025, 9:19 am • 9 0 • view
Haha! Yes, me too
aug 29, 2025, 9:21 am • 3 0 • view
This always confused me because I thought he played bass in The Velvet Underground
aug 29, 2025, 11:43 am • 4 0 • view
John Cage (1912-1992) and John Cale (1942-) did know each other, and performed together at least once: on Cage's marathon realization of Erik Satie's Vexations. Here they are at a changeover, Cage (standing) taking over for Cale (seated).
aug 29, 2025, 1:11 pm • 7 2 • view
Each also appeared on the game show I've Got A Secret--Cage performing Water Walk in January 1960... www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSul...
aug 29, 2025, 2:19 pm • 3 0 • view
and John Cale in September 1963, a few days after the Vexations performance. It seems reasonable to assume that Cage would be the connection for Cale to appear on the show. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mqO...
aug 29, 2025, 2:19 pm • 4 0 • view
📌
aug 29, 2025, 12:12 pm • 0 0 • view