Entry #4 John Cage and his Silent Song

  Can music only be what's written on a page. Or is music only music once it's performed. Are the morning bird's whistle a song or the tap of your finger on a keyboard. Is it a collection of notes and melodies in perfect order. Is a rest in the middle of a piece still considered a part of the song, or is it simply emptiness. 

   During the modern era of music (1800's-1980's), this question of "What is music" truly came in to play. Musicians were experimenting new and dangerous things since the idea of music was no longer only meant for God. Atonal music was created, which was pretty unsound. Instead of music starting and ending on the same note, no note could be played twice within the same 4 measures. It really just sounds like a child trying to annoy their parents. For example, 

    In my opinion, this isn't music at all, but whatever. It is what it is. The best thing to come out of this era were Philips Corner's Piano Activities. It's pretty much exactly as it sounds. This music didn't necessarily involve sheet music, but instructions on how to clang various objects on to the strings that are inside a piano. Multiple people were involved, and lemme say it was quite ridiculous looking, but indeed it was still considered music.

                   

         The boundaries of music were being pushed farther and farther every day to the point where it looked as though as anything surely could be considered as such. Therefore, John Cage tested this theory in the most creative way possible. 

   At one of his performances, he instructed his orchestra to polish and tune their instruments. Then with the lift of his hands and the lift of the violinist's bow, his hands fall as so as their instruments. His room becomes silenced without sound from the composer nor the band themselves for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Here's what a performance like his may look like, 

                                  

    

   On page there were 4 minutes and 33 seconds worth of rests, but in real life, there were sounds of people shuffling their feet, popping their fingers, perhaps a child crying. You could here the breaths of heavy smokers, and their coughs. The sound of chairs creaking, footsteps from the outside, maybe a loud bird. Sounds come from all directions.  So Could this ambience be music? 

    Can music only be the tiny vibrations from a single plucked chord or the sound of running air through vocal chords. Or could it be a collection of sounds surrounding you. It's unfortunate that John Cage died in 1992, however  his legend stays true where he broke bounds in the creation of music and forever led to the question and belief of what can and cannot be music. In the words of himself, 

"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."