Jump to content

John Cage's 4'33"


Recommended Posts

You can say the same thing of Cage as you can about Mingus, Byrd, and any number of jazz composers/performers. Rather than doing the same thing as everyone else, he took the musical basics, then started wondering "what if?..." I was at Northwestern's "CageNOW" festval 12 or 13 years ago, and have never had more fun or THOUGHT more about what I was hearing and the very nature of 'what is music?' than I did at that event.

Decidedly not 'f___d up.' , in other words.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 51
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Not sure what the corps did with it. I have performed the piece several times in my college days and once in my teaching career to get a point across to my students. At Towson University, then Towson State, Hank Levy wrote out a set of parts for the piece for the Jazz Band to play. The performance consisted of the entire ensemble playing the parts he wrote out for their instruments, fingers, slides, sticks flying all over the place and not one unintentional sound was heard. [except the ambient sounds] Earlier in it's history the Symphonic Band kind of did the same thing.

I hope someone out there can fill in the blanks on what the corps did.

gil

Hank Levy is the man! :ph34r:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cavies touched on 4'33 in 1997, but they cut out some of the repetitious parts down to a neat and tidy 57 seconds. :P

Firebird is one of my favourite Cavaliers show BTW.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I try to convince people of that very same point about Philip Glass and Einstein on the Beach. In my music classes all we were told about Philip Glass is Einstein on the Beach. I don't think it is fair to Philip Glass or the music community to limit discussion to one piece of work that is hardly representative of the composer as a whole. I recently had a discussion with the band director of the marching band I work for about doing a Philip Glass show (or at least one of his pieces) next year. He responded, "I'm not doing that '1 2 3 4' ####". It's a shame he won't open his mind enough to listen to the beauty that is Metamorphosis, or the driving pulse of The Canyon, or the pure genius behind his Violin Concerto.

Wow, that's sad. Don't forget his 2nd symphony. A lot of the material in that could be perfect for a show, if done right of course. The 2nd movement of his Violin Concerto is just beautiful. And to be perfectly honest, I like Einstein On The Beach :P Break out the saxophones and synthesizers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And to be perfectly honest, I like Einstein On The Beach :P

Especially because it makes your screen name make sense to those of us who haven't heard the piece yet. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it was mainly a marketing ploy to get people talking about their show and the corps in the close season that year. It worked!

The apperance of the piece in the show is by its very nature very debatable. the show concept was something about listening with your eyes so using that piece made sense in theory but you could argue equally validly that what they put on the field was just silent drill at the top of the show and bore no relevance to the original piece.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He composed strange pieces of "music" like where the performer is supposed to set the piano on fire and let it burn, and then the sounds of the piano burning becomes the "music".

He did? Cage... Hendrix... what's the difference, right? Got music history? Geez.

Missed the point entirely. If you can't find music in the world around you... you might be a redneck. ($1 to Foxworthy)

Edited by Eggbert
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, I went to a performance of 4'33" a few years ago but had to leave early.....how'd it end?

RON HOUSLEY

More Cowbells

Jimmy Page flys down on a white unicorn and plays on his double-strat while accompanied by a 2000-member children's choir. You totally missed it. :P

Edited by ShutUpAndPlayYerGuitar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...