To understand more about John Cage’s 4’33”, I looked up online and found this Ted Talk. It’s really interesting.
A professor, Julian Dodd, of University of Manchester, talked about how he thinks that this work was not a piece of music, rather, a piece of art. Really, I totally agree. This work is highly interactive. John completely has removed his ego from the work. Every time the work is performed, it is different because the sound here cannot be reproduced. There’s no score or specific instructions for this work. It;s not like the work of Mozart or Beethoven.
It is really interesting that he has helped us, in this way, to notice that there’s no absolute silence. His observation reminded me that I’ve come across an idea that people actually cannot focus on the work when there’s total silence. The reason behind it is that human evolved in an environment where there’s no total silence.
Notice the ordinary.
