Imagine this…
You walk into a packed theatre only moments late. Traffic on the bridge and a lack of parking. As you shuffle through the rows of red chairs exchanging nodding apologies you hear something. Rather, you hear nothing. It’s oddly quiet. Not silent but there’s no hyped audience chatter, no band preparation and there certainly isn’t the parading avant garde ruckus you expected.
Reaching your seat you offer an awkward smile to the young bespectacled chap beside you. He offers the same smile back. Uncomfortably you shuffle into your chair and lower your body not to draw further embarrassment. Peering over the balcony you see the full orchestra lead by a solo pianist. They just sit there. Staring. Smiling. Shuffling. Stretching. Don’t they know the curtain is up? Why is the audience so still?
You start to hear your own breathing as it escalates. The young man beside you scratches his head and it echoes strangely through the quiet theatre. Everything in the space stands still. Slowly you become aware of your near surroundings. The soft wisp of the vent overhead. The hum of the street outside. The smell of competing perfumes rise and fall eventually becoming overwhelming as a collective. You reach for your nose and an elderly man three rows back coughs.
Heads turn one by one, unnerved, intrigued or blank to find the source of the impeding sound that cut the tension. It’s been well over a minute now. Car-horns and screeching tyres that were once so distant now seem to rock the room. The few children in the audience are growing uncomfortable, nagging their parents who quickly shhh them and return their blank stare to the stage. The solo pianist unmoved, his orchestra patiently attentive, in waiting. Is there something wrong?
As you look around your stomach makes an involuntary groan, thankfully it is drowned out by somebody’s unfortunately timed flatulence. This time no-one turns. All eyes are on the stage, but bodies are moving. A few tap their feet to the rhythm of nothing in particular. Some whisper to their other halves. One lady near you even pulls out a mirror and begins to adjust her make-up. A short grey-haired lady in the front stands and turns to exit.
Suddenly with one swift, smooth motion the pianist stands turns to face the audience and stoops into a low bow. Instantly drawn to the onstage movement the audience returns to the ample quiet when you first arrived. Awkward disjointed claps call and respond from around the theatre. The pianist with a flick of his hand in appreciation returns to his seat and counts in the next piece.
You arrived 60 seconds late to a rendition of 4’33” by John Cage.
A piece written with intention to show that there truly is no such thing as silence, Cage instructs the performer, of any instrument or group of instruments, to not play for the duration of the score. Cage’s three movement piece has been at the centre of controversy since it’s conception in 1952. People have continuously questioned if it can be defined as music, offering conservatively that it should be categorised as conceptual art. It draws on the tension between performer and audience and while creating no sound of it’s own still brings to the audiences senses the six top paragraphs of visuals, sounds and even smells.
Listen to the piece below and take note of everyone you hear, see, smell and feel. Is what you’re seeing media? Anti-media? Think of your opinions of the piece.