I have learned from experience to be very careful when disagreeing with
Steve, whose knowledge and insight I greatly respect. Nevertheless:

>I do deny that Cage's little piece
>contains no music whatsoever.  It's a piece full of rests.  Rests are
>music.

No they're not.  They are one of the components of music.  Just as leaves
are not trees and rivets are not ocean liners.  It's the way they're put
together with more of themselves and with other component parts that makes
the music, the tree or the ship.  A pile of leaves is just a pile of
leaves, and a crate full of rivets will just sink to the bottom of the
ocean.  Where this thread should probably follow, as we seem to have
exhausted possibilities for the further meeting of minds.

Not taking my own advice, here is my serious answer to the original
question about proper concert behaviour during the infernal thing:  listen
attentively to all the sounds around.  Avoid making any deliberate addition
to those sounds, just as you would during any other piece, but don't try
to be unusually silent - e.g.  if you feel like turning a page in your
programme or even coughing, do it as quietly as possible, just as you
normally would.  Allow your musical imagination to work on the sounds you
hear - it may begin to find (or imagine) patterns and shapes that you might
not otherwise have noticed.  Clap the performer(s) politely at the end.
I'm not sure what kind of performance would justify a standing ovation or
calls for an encore - but remember that although their musical efforts may
have been slight and their achievements small, they're at least temporarily
not musicians but actors in a short Theatre of the Absurd play, and they
may have just given the performance of their lives.

Ian Crisp
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