I have actually seen a PRINTED score for 4'33".  It lists three movements,
each marked with a Roman numeral, and under each is the instruction TACET.
It lists the performace times of each "movement" (2 minutes, a minute and
a half, and roughly a minute.)

Usually, the person performing it will do something to mark the passage of
movements.  At the first performance, this consisted of opening and closing
the piano. At the performance I saw, it was turning the pages of the
music.  (solo cello player).  I've always thought that it would be cool to
get out of one's seat, go up on stage, say something, and bang the living
heck out of the piano, since ambient noise is what you're supposed to hear,
this should be perfectly acceptable since it is technically ambient noise.

What is most amazing about this gibberish is that it is part of the much
larger and longer "Empty Words," which is 12 HOURS of silence.  Cage might
have been a philosopher, but he was no more musician than the "artists" who
hang blank canvasses and sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I feel like taking a few soup cans, smashing them with a sledgehammer, and
supergluing them together, and calling it "MM MM Not Good." Maybe I'll be
a millionaire.

I also saw a Cage score that included a single staff, and an unintelligible
scribble all over it.  It's his sign for improvise the entire work (called
Zero by Zero Degrees).  Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase "Musical
Joke," eh?

comments?

Charles Dalmas
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ICQ: 5420025