Why John Cage’s provocative ‘silent piece’ is still powerful today
John Cage sitting in Harvard University's anechoic chamber in 1951. Wikimedia Commons
John Cage’s 4’33” is one of the most iconic and provocative musical works of the 20th century. It is also one of my absolute favourites. This is admittedly a bit of a fringe view, given that the score simply instructs any combination of musicians to produce no purposeful sounds for a duration of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. For its 1952 premiere, the pianist David Tudor sat on stage, silently opening and closing the lid of a piano to demarcate the three subsections Cage indicates. Audiences dismissed this ostensibly silent piece as a provocative joke, leading Cage to complain that they ‘missed the point’. But what is the point, and why do I think 4’33” can actually be incredibly powerful?
Cage’s aesthetic interests at the time help to answer this. The piece was first conceived in 1948 as a “Silent Prayer,” relating to the composer’s curiosity in Zen Buddhism and its emphasis on silent meditation. Cage also started exploring chance composition during the early 1950s. He began using I Ching, a Chinese practice based on flipping coins onto various charts, to determine aspects of works like Music of Changes (1951). This drew further from Eastern thinking to escape Western determinism and individualism, cultivating a more abstract “compositional silence” by diminishing the composer’s control over the music. Another interesting influence on 4’33” was Cage’s 1951 visit to Harvard’s anechoic chamber, a space creating a near silent environment using surfaces designed to absorb all sounds. He was dismayed to find the quiet broken by the noise of his own nervous system and blood circulation. These factors suggest the piece is an invitation to meditate on the indeterminate ambience of any given environment, and the impossibility of “true” silence. In dismissing 4’33” as silent, and thus empty, audiences failed to tune in to these sounds.
Framing the piece as a meditation understates its undeniably provocative nature, however, and misses much of why it’s powerful. Appreciating ambient sounds is meditative during private spiritual practice, but placed in the context of live musical performance it is an entirely different question. 4’33”, for its lack of purposeful sound-production, challenges all the rituals and expectations of this environment. Having performed it myself, I found this produced an intensely unsettling effect for both me and the audience, rather than a relaxing and meditative one. As the sole performer, I became deeply conscious of attention shifting to my bodily presence on stage, once the distraction of music-making was removed. The audience grew increasingly uncertain and uncomfortable the longer I did nothing, becoming hyper-aware of the minutiae of sound and movement in the space. When an audience member’s phone rang towards the end of the performance, the piercing of that tension felt like an almost Mahlerian climax. It’s easy to dismiss the idea of “silent” music, and even aesthetic pontification about the influences of Zen Buddhism and indeterminate composition. It’s hard, however, to dismiss the experience of collectively holding intense stillness in a space for nearly 5 minutes. My suggestion, then, is not to dismiss Cage’s ideas until you’ve had the opportunity to attend, or even lead, a performance of 4’33”.