It’s difficult to write about something that didn’t happen. Since today’s workshop was silent I thought I’d write about (arguably) the most famous silence of them all: experimental composer John Cage’s 4’33”. The composition is three movements of an orchestra shuffling uncomfortably in their seats and not doing much else.

 

4’33” is the most elegant blend of idiotic, pointless artistic snobbery and deeply personal, genuinely moving work. On the surface, Cage’s ego in attempting to harness and eventually copyright silence is almost intolerable. It’s like that joke about an artist deciding a blank A4 sheet is art and going on to sell it for millions, simply because the artistic world was too afraid to be seen to not ‘get’ it.

 

On the other hand, 4’33” is incredible. Peter Gutmann, freelance music columnist and broadcast regulation and transaction specialist at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC, says: “This is a deeply personal music which each witness creates to his/her own reactions to life. Concerts and records standardize our responses, but no two people will ever hear 4’33” the same way.” And Peter has a point. Silence is a deeply personal experience that we bring our individual thoughts, fears, hunger and discomfort to. 4’33” might be uncomfortable shoes to one person, mild tinnitus to another. If art is about interpretation then this might be one of its purest expressions.

 

None of this excuses the lengthy legal battle between Cage’s estate and Mike Batt, lead of a band named the Planets and composer for the Wombles (no relation to Gutmann’s firm). It’s an ugly story that detracts from the piece itself. Put in a vacuum — away from a musical community desperate not to miss out, away from later re-writes (I’m not kidding; silence was rewritten by Cage multiple times) — 4’33” is beautiful. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum; nothing does. I know now that whenever I listen to 4’33” all I’m going to hear is The Wombling Song.