Hacker News Reader

Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

4’33” isn’t about about non musical culture although some have mistakenly construed it as such. Cage made it absolutely clear what it was about in his comments about the piece.

View on HN

I could have worded that better: to make its point about sounds and, if you please, music, it depends on nonmusical cultural expectations that surround musical performance. Its adherence to the outward trappings of musical performance in the 20th century prompt the audience to perceive what occurs during it as part of a "performance". Apart from that, there's nothing more musical about it than sitting alone in a meadow — which I think was essentially Cage's point.

That I find myself using the word "point" so often here emphasizes, to me, that Cage was engaging in philosophy rather than musical composition.

Your last sentence is very interesting and probably captures our different perspectives. I see Cage’s work as pointing towards an experience that I might enjoy and be enriched by in practice (not always but then I don’t always enjoy performances of my favourite works) and the concept is part but only a part of that.

Messiaen found sitting in a meadow quite a musical experience!

That's why I chose the sitting in a meadow comparison: it's an experience you could also choose to interpret as musical even though it is not organized sound. An aside: I think an awareness of and exposure to the sounds of nature is beneficial to a composer, even if I don't think it's intrinsically musical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com