Dreaming in Silence
In the music community there is deep rooted controversy in the numbers four hundred and thirty-three. An infamous number associated with the performance by a late John Cage, on August 29, 1952.
The intention behind this piece was to incite an awareness in the listeners that, everything is music. Every sound, tick, clack, boom, or bang is music. He composed a silent piece that would make the listener hear all the sounds around them in a large auditorium. He would add in sounds at specific times, but it was random. As a college professor, he did this out of curiosity and the desire to push the boundaries of what current music was thought of. John Cage made the first remix by including the sound of the radios in his work. Due to it being a different version every time because the radio had something else on every time.
Some of the memorable moments of composers recreating the 4:33 song was Carolyn Brown, Merce Cunningham, and David Tudor. Carolyn placed a tuba on her head during her performance. Merce used a fish to slap the piano strings and David just made himself some tea.
These different iterations of the 4:33 incited many people to continue recreating his work. Then many years later in his life, he created a series of musical ensembles called the “number pieces,” that were made with the intention that you play the piece as many times as the title states. Could John Cage also have created one of the first instances of a looped song as well?
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