John Cage's 4'33"

[KevinSop85]

I'm not sure, I've never heard that one. b**bs

The effect was mostly satirical, but they actually pulled it off pretty well.

KevinSop85, did you mean a recording of the vacuum piece or the cactus piece? I'm pretty sure the tbone/vacuum thing was a one-off for the sake of the class.

Both and the 4'33"

[corpsreps]

I was looking at corpsreps.com and on a whim decided to a composer search of John Cage. What I found was that the Senators (of the UK?) performed 4'33" in 2003. (?????????)

Is there anyone here who actually saw this??? What on earth did they do???

For anyone who doesn't know, John Cage was a very weird composer who died in 1991 or around that time. 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 also wrote a concerto for 4 boomboxes or something like that.

4'33" is a piece for "piano" where the performer sits at the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and doesn't play a single note. The "music" (in Cage's mind) is suppsed to be the sounds of the audience reacting to what they're seeing.

Dude was f***ed up.

The information on corpsreps was provided by someone on the corps staff. The show was titled "Listen with your eyes". The repertoire is confirmed on the corps website.

http://www.senators.org.uk/shows/2003.htm

I never did get an explanation of what that looked like in their show.

My church choir did 4' 33" once. It was actually a very powerful experience. The choir director got up, started the piece with a down beat. At the conclusion of the time - which seemed amazingly long - he did a cut off. The point seemed to be that even in silence there is sound and that all sound is in some way musical or at least rhythmic.

Amazon sells a Cage CD where 4' 33" is the title track. See ASIN B000003070. The track list says "for any ensemble or number of players" so I guess it isn't strictly a piano piece.