John Cage –Silence

 Who was John Cage?

o American composer, theorist and writer
o Leading figure in the post-war avant-garde
o Pioneer of indeterminacy
o Steps outside the confines of our understanding of western music
o His work is highly conceptual
o Challenging the notion of the performer
o Challenging our conception of musical sounds versus non-musical sounds
o Influenced by zahzen = overcoming the ego
 Silence
o ‘There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always
something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we
cannot.’
(Cage, 1961, p.8)
o ‘Silence is all of the sound we don’t intend. There is no such thing as absolute
silence. Therefore, silence may very well include loud sounds and more and more
in the twentieth century. The sound of jet planes, of sirens, etc.’
Michael Zwerin, “A Lethal Measurement,” in John Cage, ed. Richard Kostelanetz
(New York: Praeger, 1970), 166.
o There is always something to hear
o Silence is something that can be heard = all those sounds that we do not intend
o When he engages in silence as a practice, he is trying to redirect our listening to
all these non-intentional sounds
 Anechoic Chamber
o ‘In fact, try as we -may to make a silence, we cannot. For certain engineering
purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is
called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without
echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two
sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge,
he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low
one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will
continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music. ‘
(Cage, 1961, p.8)

o
 Silence
 o Silence for Cage is NOT about the absence of sound; silence in this sense is
impossible
o Non-intended sounds = this is how he understands music
o The sounds of the world beyond us
o Cage looked to introduce the practice of non-intention in artmaking, particularly
composition
o Sound that doesn’t mean anything
o Not inner, but just outer
o Kant = there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and
the other is laughter
 4’33’’
o A ‘silent’ composition composed by Cage
o First performed by David Tudor on August 29th 1952 in Maverick Concert Hall,
New York City
o There was a written score of three movements, each varied in length, but totaling
four minutes and thirty-three seconds
o Unintentional sounds; non-intentional practice
o Framing
o The boundary between the art, musical and non-musical, collapses
o Never a silent piece, the music was the shuffling of chairs, rain hitting the roof
etc.
o Closing the lid of the piano = closing the lid on the composer and the idea of the
music being played to open up the music work of unintentional sounds
 New music and new listening
o ‘New music: new listening. Not an attempt to understand something that is being
said, for, if something were being said, the sound would be given the shapes of
words. Just an attention to the activity of sounds.’(Cage, 1961, p.10)
 White Paintings – Robert Rauschenberg (1951)
o ‘“The white paintings were airports for the lights, shadows and particles” (Cage).
Rauschenberg was able to make nothing the subject of a painting in a way that
Cage would, after him, make nothing the subject of a piece of music’
 Vincent Katz, ‘A genteel iconoclasm’, Online Tate, 2006,

 Indeterminacy
o Indeterminate: something that is not exactly known, established or defined
 o Cage initially defined it as the ability of the piece to be performed in different
ways
o A piece where its performance is not precisely specified
o Gaps within the piece, not completely mapped out
o Certain aspects are provided by the composer, but arrangement left to the
performer
o Relates to notion of chance operations: large part of the composition is left to
chance and/or left to the determination of its performer
 Water Walk

o
o Chance elements and things are left to their own devices
o Inviting laughter of confusion as well as genuine enjoyment of the piece
o Intruction manual script
o Example of indeterminancy

 Can we ever ‘let sounds be themselves’?

 Can art expose us to something that exceeds our ability to think and conceptualize?
 Cage is not worried about how we talk about art, we just need to listen

 Cage and philosophy

o ‘And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with
purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a
purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an
affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest
improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're
living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and one's desires out of its
way and lets it act of its own accord’.
(Cage, 1961, p.12)
 Problems with Cage’s idea of silence
o According to Douglas Kahn, Cage’s notion of silence results in a ‘depleted
complexity of what could be heard in any sound in itself’ (Noise, Water, Meat)
 By emphasizing the purity of sound itself, Cage eradicates what's noisy in
sound
 By flattening everything to just being music, what happens to these noises
and cultural antagonisms?
 Cage silenences the social and ecological dimensions of sound
o Cage silences the social and ecological dimension of sound
 Is it tyrannical?
 Why does all sound have to be music?
 What about noise as negative?
 Do we lose something important here?