{"id":1376,"date":"2012-08-09T23:05:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T03:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2012-08-10T18:26:37","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T22:26:37","slug":"an-aesthetic-object-on-the-a-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1376","title":{"rendered":"An Aesthetic Object on the A Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the upcoming weekend edition of the New York Times, Allan Kozinn enjoys himself on the train:<\/a><\/p>\n

But if Cage intended the performers of \u201c4\u201933\u201d\u00a0\u201d 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 \u2014 birds, crickets, the wind rustling through the trees, the patter of rain \u2014 mingle with the artful tones the musicians produce.<\/p>\n

Cage had been supplying artful tones\u00a0since the 1930s<\/a>, but in the 1940s he began thinking about the music that could be plucked from the air. That was the point of \u201c4\u201933\u201d.\u201d 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\u00a01952 Maverick program<\/a>. 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\u2019t busy being scandalized by what some regarded as a provocation.<\/p>\n

Can a subway ride count as a performance of \u201c4\u201933\u201d\u00a0\u201d? Absolutely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, no. And it is really quite simple why. \u00a0Do we consider General Sherman<\/a> 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\u00a0grittiness\u00a0in Gogh’s case) as they are aesthetic objects, but they are not necessarily on their own<\/em> a work of art. \u00a0I 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\u00a0proclamation!). \u00a0When we sit in the alps and gaze over valleys, or scuba dive in coral reefs, we are not viewing art.<\/p>\n

So, what Kozinn appreciated on the A train was not 4’33”, repetitions, or excerpts there of, but a simple enjoyment of sound. \u00a0An appreciation of the beauty of everyday life. \u00a0I 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,<\/p>\n

Cage would have understood.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work,\u201d he told the composer William Duckworth in 1982. \u201cI listen to it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it,\u201d he added. \u201cI realize that it\u2019s going on continuously.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

but Cage is wrong, this definition of art is so expansive that it becomes useless. \u00a0The space for the art must be created.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Please note that I am not arguing that one should not enjoy sound as an aesthetic object, but that art and aesthetic object differ<\/p>\n

Edit: (8\/10\/12) Grammar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the upcoming weekend edition of the New York Times, Allan Kozinn enjoys himself on the train:<\/p>\n

But if Cage intended the performers of \u201c4\u201933\u201d \u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-philosophy","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}