John Cage – 4’33″
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John Cage was a modernist composer with a playful sense of humor. In 1952 he wrote this short piano piece, which instructs the soloist not to play any notes at all – the only sound you hear being provided by audience and their surroundings.
The ensuing argument over whether or not this counts as music quickly made 4’33″ the most famous and controversial composition of Cage’s career. Today, the work is most widely understood as a challenge to the concept of silence – even when there’s apparently nothing present to make a sound, you can always hear something if you listen hard enough.
This week’s free Discovery Download is the first of the three movements, recorded at London’s historic Henry Wood Hall. Listen carefully, and you can hear traffic outside, creaking floorboards and a clock ticking somewhere in the building. If you like it, you can download the remainder of the album here and check out some of John Cage’s louder works here. Check out the album.
IMPORTANT: Downloads are only free on iTunes for approximately 1 week from this post date.
