From the upcoming weekend edition of the New York Times, Allan Kozinn enjoys himself on the train:
But if Cage intended the performers of “4’33” ” to keep quiet, he did not mean for the work to be heard as silence. He wrote it for the pianist David Tudor to perform in a recital at Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, N.Y., in August 1952. The hall, which still hosts an ambitious summer series, is an open barn, set amid acres of woodland. Part of its charm is that the sounds of the environment — birds, crickets, the wind rustling through the trees, the patter of rain — mingle with the artful tones the musicians produce.
Cage had been supplying artful tones since the 1930s, but in the 1940s he began thinking about the music that could be plucked from the air. That was the point of “4’33”.” The pianist was to open the keyboard lid, sit quietly for 30 seconds, then close the lid and reopen it for the 2-minute-23-second second movement, and again for the 1-minute-40-second finale. (Those, at any rate, are the durations printed in the 1952 Maverick program. In the published score, the movement lengths are 33 seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, and 1 minute 20 seconds.) The piano was indeed silent, but the Maverick audience had plenty to listen to, or would have if its members weren’t busy being scandalized by what some regarded as a provocation.
Can a subway ride count as a performance of “4’33” ”? Absolutely.
Actually, no. And it is really quite simple why. Do we consider General Sherman to be a grand sculpture? Was the human being Vincent van Gogh a painting? No, we can appreciate these objects (or people) for their beauty (or grittiness in Gogh’s case) as they are aesthetic objects, but they are not necessarily on their own a work of art. I thought that the dadaists made clear that (at the very least) for any type of ‘material’ to become art, it required some sort of artistic gesture to be acted upon it (even if the gesture is only a proclamation!). When we sit in the alps and gaze over valleys, or scuba dive in coral reefs, we are not viewing art.
So, what Kozinn appreciated on the A train was not 4’33”, repetitions, or excerpts there of, but a simple enjoyment of sound. An appreciation of the beauty of everyday life. I do believe that Cage would have loved the experience just as much as Kozinn did, and he would have agreed with Kozinn that the sounds on that train were art,
Cage would have understood.
“No day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work,” he told the composer William Duckworth in 1982. “I listen to it every day.”
“I don’t sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it,” he added. “I realize that it’s going on continuously.”
but Cage is wrong, this definition of art is so expansive that it becomes useless. The space for the art must be created.
Please note that I am not arguing that one should not enjoy sound as an aesthetic object, but that art and aesthetic object differ
Edit: (8/10/12) Grammar