Album of the Day — July 3
John Cage — 4'33"
03.July.2020
John Cage
4'33"
1952
This isn’t an album.
4'33" is a three-movement composition of silence written by American composer John Cage.
If you don’t know this piece, it is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
The “music” is the ambient sounds of the location where the piece is being performed.
4'33" can be performed on any instrument or group of instruments as “The score instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements.”
A response to the impact of Zen Buddhism that Cage had been studying, he considered 4'33" to be his most important work. For Cage, it was the epitome of his belief that “any sound can be music.”
While he had been experimenting with silence for a few years, the concept became crystalized in 1951 with two separate inspirations:
- While visiting Harvard University, Cage visited their anechoic chamber (a room designed so that the walls, ceiling, and floor absorb all sounds made in the room rather than reflecting them as echos). Where Cage expected to hear silence, he heard “two…
