Hope you enjoyed 4’33’ by American musician John Cage? If not, do check yesterday’s post. In the year 1951, John Cage got an opportunity to be in an anechoic chamber at Harvard. The speciality of this chamber is that this room is foam-padded and thus absorbs all the sound. So, one can experience what silence is, and that is what Cage wanted to do. When there was no external sound what cage could hear was the whooshing of his own blood flowing in his body. This was an 'ear-opener' for Cage. He could see that, only after death can one hear true silence. Of course, there is no one to give the evidence of that too.
As Cage was going through this experience of silence or the lack of it, he came across a series of flat white canvases by Robert Rauschenberg, a painter and graphic artist. Although the canvas was blank, there were shadows, light and dust on the canvas. Thus, giving a different appearance depending on where you, the observer stood. The painter had no control over these paintings.
Soon within a year, Cage came up with 4’33” based on the ideas of Robert Rauschenberg. But when the piece made its debut, the New York Times called it, “a hollow, sham, pretentious Greenwich Village exhibitionism", as quoted by Lucas Reilly in his article on 4’33”. Even Cage’s mother thought it went too far. But more sympathetic listeners saw it as a perplexing thought experiment, an IV drip of instant Zen. Musicians from John Lennon to Frank Zappa to John Adams would go on to hail it as a genius.
When I look at these names, they for sure have some credibility when it comes to music. In our day to day life, we see purists and critics of music. I know a few who are so stuck with certain notes and ragas of a particular singer or musician that they find other singers and musicians to be irritating. Let me end this post dedicating a quote by Cage to my purist friends.
“If you develop an ear for sounds that are "musical", it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not "musical", and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”
― John Cage
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