Walter Mayer wrote:

>Silence has always been an element of music.  The young Mozart used it
>effectively when, at age 9, he composed his K.19d Piano Sonata for two
>players in its concluding rondo (which incidentally foreshadowed the final
>rondo in his Serenade Gran Partita).  I understand that Mahler intended
>a pause significantly longer than is usual between symphonic movements
>between two movements of one of his symphonies (which I'm sure the many
>Mahler mavens on this list will recognize instanter).
>
>If silence w/in a musical work are an acceptable part of music, why can't
>a relatively brief period of silence of specified duration, admittedly a
>bit longer than the rests or pauses usually encountered as parts of
>conventional musical works, be accepted as an integral musical work in
>its own right?

I think the difference is that in the other works you mentioned, the
silences are integrated into a deliberately worked out combination of
sounds.  The silence is only one of the elements of an organized structure.
That element of artifice turns a collection of sounds and silences into
music.  Of course one can argue that the frame of 4 1/2 minutes is
sufficient to turn ordinary silence into a deliberate statement and thus
into art.  I'm too conservative for that point of view, which also gives
artistic credence to random blobs of paint.  What goes on within the bounds
of 4'33' is in my view just not structured enough to amount to an integral
musical work.  That doesn't mean it's not an interesting and worthwhile
comment on the listening process, but to me that's as far as it goes.  I
remember reading about a Japanese picture gallery where one of the
'paintings' was simply a framed window looking out onto the landscape.  No
doubt that makes you think and casts the real paintings in a different
light, but I wouldn't call the window a work of art itself.

Felix Delbruck
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