Walter Meyer characteristically refuses to give in:

>The extended period of silence presented by 4'33" was contemplated, I
>believe, as part of a longer concert in which musical instruments were
>played and heard.  I think that this arguably puts 4'33" back into the
>concepts of rests and pauses between movements.

So anything that can be found sandwiched between two pieces of music
is also a piece of music, or a part of a larger three(+)-part piece?
Therefore, (1) the usual interval in a concert programme is music; (2) the
conventional concert programme of overture / concerto / symphony is to be
regarded as a single work in three parts; (3) the programmer of the concert
is necessarily a composer (because he creates musical structures).

(2) may have a tiny atom of possible truth if the programme is designed
with pieces that fit together not only thematically but also musically, but
otherwise this is, I think, stretching a very tiny rationalisation much
further than it will reasonably go.

I have never argued against the validity of 4'33" as a statement of
some ideas about music, about concerts, about audience expectations,
about the un-heeded noises that underlie the sounds that composers of
music want us to listen to.  I do not doubt that it has a significant
impact on some people hearing it for the first time, and that it may have
been an important influence on the way that some people have experienced
sound and music after a performance of it.  I have been surprised by two
things on this trip around a subject which recurs on most musical lists
every now and again - the extent to which some people misunderstand Cage's
very clear intentions with this work (e.g.  the idea that it is some kind
of audience-participation piece, in which members of the audience are
expected to engage in a kind of spontaneous free improvisation by clapping
etc., or that it could be proper to pre-select the "background" noise in
advance of the performance); and the determination of some people to go
against all reason by arguing that something that demonstrably contains no
musical content whatsoever is a piece of music.  It is as if they can only
see:  "not-music" = rubbish.  I take a broader view than that.

Ian
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