revolutions are fought over crap like this

Here is an account of the first time 4'33" was "performed" in public by pianist David Tudor in 1952...

Tudor placed the hand-written score, which was in conventional notation with blank measures, on the piano and sat motionless as he used a stopwatch to measure the time of each movement. The score indicated three silent movements, each of a different length, but when added together totalled four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Tudor signaled its commencement by lowering the keyboard lid of the piano. The sound of the wind in the trees entered the first movement. After thirty seconds of no action, he raised the lid to signal the end of the first movement. It was then lowered for the second movement, during which raindrops pattered on the roof. The score was in several pages, so he turned the pages as time passed, yet playing nothing at all. The keyboard lid was raised and lowered again for the final movement, during which the audience whispered and muttered.

Cage said, "People began whispering to one another, and some people began to walk out. They didn't laugh -- they were just irritated when they realized nothing was going to happen, and they haven't fogotten it 30 years later: they're still angry." Maverick Concert Hall, the site of the first performance, was ideal in allowing the sounds of the environment to enter, because the back of the hall was open to the surrounding forest. When Tudor finished, raising the keyboard lid and himself from the piano, the audience burst into an uproar -- "infuriated and dismayed," according to the reports. Even in the midst of an avant garde concert attended by modern artists, 4'33" was considered "going too far"

Cage was a brilliant music philosopher.

The point of 4'33" was, as Dr_Bone points out, that music is everywhere. He also composed 0'00" which was a "piece of any length to be performed by any number of performers by any means"... he performed it by chopping up some vegetables and blending them, and then drinking the veggie juice.

In his own words: "Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?"

I especially like his story about entering an anechoic chamber (chamber designed to elminate all sound) and he could still hear the sound of his nervous system as a high pitch and his circulatory system as a lower pitch.

The point being; we could never hear 100% silence. He also had some interesting observations about the nature of randomness, I-Ching, etc.

Brilliant man, it's a shame you don't know the full story.

This is one of those things that threaten to make my brain explode at any moment...

Then again perhaps the 6 figures were all zeroes, in which case all's well with the world again.

Stopheles, you made my day dude.

Aaron Carter: Slip Away

Get it while it's hot. A piece of my own creation. Hurry up and obtain it before Hillary Rosen has me publically flogged, hanged, drawn and quartered, boiled and lots of other nasty things. Get it right here

Oh yeah, this'll interest you farkers; Cage was also one of the world's foremost experts on wild mushrooms.

ahem.

Ok, well, being an actual composer (ok, in college studying to become one), I have to agree with the settlement. I'll be the first one to say that I hate atonal, modernist, postmodernist, or whatever it's calling itself these days (Give me a Bach fugue any day... G minor... mmmmm), but it would piss me off if someone took a song I wrote, sped it up by 50 beats per minute, and then sold it as their own. Just because Cage chose no notes for his song (a gimmicky idea that I abhor), doesn't mean he didn't write the thing. It's no different than if someone took his 'new' organ peice, supposedly 668 years long (the notes are held down on the organ by bricks) and sped it up to a brisk hour long performance to fit on a CD.

The only way a composer can eat is if someone is playing the songs and paying royalties. Just because Cage is dead doesn't mean his estate shouldn't grab all the cash it can! wait...

And remember kids, those are UK dollars!

Look out, anyone who's thinking of putting a hidden track on a CD. Gotta fill the in-between ones ones with something now.

Thank you, NightTripper and FotH for trying to explain the artistic merits to the Philistines mocking Cage's work.

Incidentally... "music philosopher"... never heard him called that before. Quite insightful.

Cheers.

What about Type O Negative? They did a song that's all silence, "The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences". I guess I'd be scared to sue them too...

Cage, if he was still alive, wouldn't have sued over this. It seems more like this is all a publicity stunt, and the six-figure amount will probably end up financing some scholarships somewhere. Especially since Cage didn't have any greedy kids drooling over his estate. (Chalk one up to homosexuality.) 4'33" is just one piece out of a great 45 or 55 year composing career.

I may be incorrect, but weren't there like 20 little five second segments on Dave Matthews Band's "Under The Table And Dreaming"? If so, should he be sued 20 times? Well I don't think he acknowledged Mr. Cage or anyone, so maybe not... This is just friggin' dumb.

MacB:

Just because someone doesn't like Cage (I don't, see my above post) doesn't mean anything. I personally think he was a pisscrap hack. Sure, he had original ideas, but so did Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart at the time (well, maybe not Beethoven).

The only posters in this thread that are inferior are those who think liking what no one else likes makes them 'hip' and 'avant guarde'.

Sometimes crap is just crap, no matter who likes it.

How can you copyright silence? How can you possibly copyright nothing? That's like patenting holes or copyrighting a blank screen.

*shakes fist with contempt for the world*

I am soooo much better than you all because I listen to insane techno polka. Dear dear, I don't see hooooww you barbarians can tolerate such God-awful tripe.

/avant guarde

In other news the RIAA has announced plans to sue any website that contains no audio sound on the grounds of violating the cage copyright.

does ne1 have the music video of these songs?

MacBagwan: Ummm...I guess you didn't see my Boobies?? lol Check out the 14th post in this thread for my views on Cage.

lol!! I forgot fark changes certain phrases..."Boobies" becomes "boobies" lmao!

A free monkey to anyone who knows who this is and why he's relevant to this thread.

John Cage, composer = Johnny Cage, Mortal Komat extraordinare. Now give me my monkey!

I don't think these nut-jobs would have won the suit at all...This guy is a total nut-sniffer for settling out of court. Unless, as I'm not sure I read this correctly, he did credit the original piece to begin with...Intellectual property rights are all crap anyway, no one ever really invents an idea, they are built on the foundation of thoughts that have existed for ages.

Kombat even. At least I remember his fatality from the Genesis days. *uppercuts Steveo's head off and steals his monkey*

my silent revolution

You can't steal my monkey, it's copyrighted. I'll sue.

Is Cage in MK4? I was really disappointed when they removed him from 3. His MonkeyPunch was the only reason I played that series.

"Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

Huh? "My brain hurts".

MontyPlagiarism!

i downloaded the song off Kazzaa, im listening to it now. damn it rocks. the speakers are at full and wow....

Sub-Zero and Raiden were the coolest ever. MK1 was my favorite, MK2 was alright, but I stopped playing after that.

The best videogames evar made for those old consoles:

General Chaos
Shining Force I & II
Genghis Khan 2

Oh yeah and Final Fantasy III.

Soon to be copywrited:

Notes A,B,C,D,E,F,and G

As a big fan of modern/20th centrury experimental "art/classical" music I have an opinion.

A recording of 4'33'' would not be silent. It would have to, to faithfully reproduce the creators intentions, contain the noise made by the audience shuffling their feet, opening wrappers of candy, realizing that the piece doesn't contain notes, etc. This piece would actually have some form, as the audience will react to the performer/performers marking the end of sections, etc, creating a musical arc. Also, a graph of the pieces score looks almost exactly like an art piece by a friend of the composer, which consisted of a white canvis with 2 lines marking sections about like this:

' '
' '
' '
' '


(the lines were not dotted but it's text)

I've heard this piece performed in concert. It was appropiate in the setting.

A recording of the other piece is plain silence and does not bear that relationship. How bout that.

And the picture that was posted was of john cage, albeit a bad one.

This reminds me of something a comedian did in an art club, or something.

His piece was called "1000" (or something), and it started:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11...

He didn't get too far before he was asked to stop. Those artists just can't appreciate art.

uh...

I'm surprised nobody's posted a link to that guy who created the algorythm for turning phone numbers into music and was trying to copyright them all.

If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does Cage's estate get to sue?

My old phone number was "855 2645"
Sounded exactly like the first half of

Pie iesu Domine
*Whomp*
Dona Eis requiem
*Whomp*

From the holy grail.

I wonder if digitly synthesized silence is copyrighted.

Boojl:

So in 3 posts you've managed to piss off both modernists and postmodernists, people who write atonal music, Beethoven enthusiasts and basically anyone who likes music that you think is crap.

Quite frankly, if you are studying to be a composer, what on earth kind of music are you writing? You're obviously not writing modern or postmodern music (not that your previous posts indicate you understand what either of the terms entail), so are you writing 18th century G Minor fugues? Are you writing advertising jingles? Aren't you being just as elitist by claiming you know what sounds good, ie Bach G Minor Fugue, when I'd imagine a lot of people themselves would consider that to sound like crap (there's no accounting for taste)?

Allow me to point out that there are two parts of Cage: one is Cage the composer and the other is Cage the philosopher. Cage was a brilliant philosopher. He was a musical mad-scientist. He was a pretty lame composer.

As Optikeye points out, he was a respected classically trained musician, not some crazy PT Barnum. Most of his compositions were merely to illustrate points about his philosophy. They were experiments in music; not specifically designed to be listenable.

Again: "Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?"

Read about some of his ideas before you even think about explaining his music. Otherwise, you're just being ignorant.