as slow as possible

[aleks]

"As slow as possible", John Cage's gleichnamiges Orgelwerk, das am 5. September 2001 mit dem Einschalten des Orgelmotors und des Blasebalges in der Burchardikirche in Halberstadt mit einer Pause begonnen hat, soll 639 Jahre lang dauern. Nun wird der erste Akkord, ein E-Dur Klang, in dem romanischen Kirchenbau aus den ersten Orgelpfeifen ertönen, die sich mit den kommenden und sich im Lauf der Jahrzehnte verändernden Klängen vermehren und zu einer Cage-Orgel aufbauen werden.


for all non-german speaking massive...this is about john cage´s "as slow as possible" an organ piece which started in september 2001 and will last 639 years!

quite long, huh?

[c s]

you can't put it on vinyl i guess.

[MUX]

he's the dude that sat at a piano at woodstock and had a stopwatch, started it , stared at the paino for 4'33 .. and quiety whisperd... "the name of that track was 4'33"

he must have had double doses of that brown acid that was going around...

[amble]

yes Halberstadt is not too far from where i live, i think i'll have a visit when there is something hearable around. that could become a nice family tradition. something that sick just has to be supported!

[Sheridan]

Originally posted by MUX
he's the dude that sat at a piano at woodstock and had a stopwatch, started it , stared at the paino for 4'33 .. and quiety whisperd... "the name of that track was 4'33"

he must have had double doses of that brown acid that was going around...

that is a very famous...err...piece of music. didn't know he 'played' it at woodstock though.

have you ever heard the remix? :!

[marcel]

Originally posted by Sheridan

have you ever heard the remix? :!
4'34?

[amble]

no it's just running backwards.

[MUX]

hahahahahahahha please tell me that's nonsense...

[KaOz]

john cage is so awesome

[MUX]

he 's music is a cliched party joke....
but he kinda invented a avantgarde way of looking at music

[invisibleplanet]

so what is the 'score' with listening to this historic masterpiece?
shall i take all 4 generations of my family to it now,
and then book tickets for future members as they are born,
for the next 13 generations or something?

[animal night train]

so did you hear about the guy who had legal action against him for sampling that Cage piece? no shit, it actually happened.

i never heard of him performing it at woodstock.

[invisibleplanet]

can silence be copyrighted?
i heard rumours in the media of a £100,000 out-of-court settlement.
this was 1952 wasn't it? was woodstock 'happening' then?

orginally by James Wierzbicki
What is new – or what was new, in the early 1950s – is the idea that the silence normally associated with the absence of music can be heard in a way that makes it seem to contain music. The idea presupposes, of course, that there is no such thing as absolute silence. Noise, i.e., environmental or human sound over which the listener has no control, in fact exists everywhere and at all times; to hear the "music" contained in "silence," one must simply attend to this noise.

John Cage is acknowledged as the author of this idea, and his 4’33" – a 1952 "composition" scored "tacit, for any instrument or combination of instruments" and divided into three clearly marked segments whose durations total four minutes and thirty-three seconds – is widely acclaimed as Cage’s breakthrough piece. [17]

Cage himself often refers to 4’33" as "the silent piece." But just as often he reminds interviewers that anyone who regards the work as literally silent has missed the point. He says:

There’s no such thing as silence. What [the first audience] thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. [18]

Cage’s 4’33" is not a musical work per se but, rather, an illustration of a musical-philosophical concept. It is not a composition but a proposition, similar to a Zen koan but much more realizable than the famous one – called "sekishu" in Japanese – that asks the student to contemplate the sound of one hand clapping. A Cagean koan might be phrased: "What music do you hear when you hear no music?" or "What do we hear when we hear silence?"

That Cage, too, regards 4’33" as simply a statement about the essence of music is suggested by Richard Kostelanetz, a writer who knows Cage well:

Sometimes Cage creates radical antitheses for himself to synthesize – by acting in an extreme way, perhaps with a special kind of irony, an artist can force himself to entertain new thoughts, for the fact that Cage formally presented 4’33" scarcely a few times persuades me to believe that he knows, first, that this piece is an ironic gesture and, secondly, that he sometimes takes positions finally unacceptable to sensible human beings, a category that includes himself. For instance, the first performance of 4’33" theoretically granted him permission to explore the fullest range of sounds, both intentional and nonintentional, yet, even though 4’33" was in a fundamental sense artless, most of these subsequent works represent a synthesis. [19]

In Cage’s own writings, the largest number of statements regarding 4’33" are to be found, not surprisingly, in the essays that make up his 1961 book Silence. Most of them, like this one, support the idea of 4’33" not as music per se but as Zen-inspired commentary on the nature of music:

… when it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one turns in the direction of those he does not intend. The turning is psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity – for a musician, the giving up of music. This psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything was gained. [20]

What is new – or what was new, in the early 1950s – is the idea that the silence normally associated with the absence of music can be heard in a way that makes it seem to contain music. The idea presupposes, of course, that there is no such thing as absolute silence. Noise, i.e., environmental or human sound over which the listener has no control, in fact exists everywhere and at all times; to hear the "music" contained in "silence," one must simply attend to this noise.

John Cage is acknowledged as the author of this idea, and his 4’33" – a 1952 "composition" scored "tacit, for any instrument or combination of instruments" and divided into three clearly marked segments whose durations total four minutes and thirty-three seconds – is widely acclaimed as Cage’s breakthrough piece. [17]

Cage himself often refers to 4’33" as "the silent piece." But just as often he reminds interviewers that anyone who regards the work as literally silent has missed the point. He says:

There’s no such thing as silence. What [the first audience] thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began patterning the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. [18]

Cage’s 4’33" is not a musical work per se but, rather, an illustration of a musical-philosophical concept. It is not a composition but a proposition, similar to a Zen koan but much more realizable than the famous one – called "sekishu" in Japanese – that asks the student to contemplate the sound of one hand clapping. A Cagean koan might be phrased: "What music do you hear when you hear no music?" or "What do we hear when we hear silence?"

That Cage, too, regards 4’33" as simply a statement about the essence of music is suggested by Richard Kostelanetz, a writer who knows Cage well:

Sometimes Cage creates radical antitheses for himself to synthesize – by acting in an extreme way, perhaps with a special kind of irony, an artist can force himself to entertain new thoughts, for the fact that Cage formally presented 4’33" scarcely a few times persuades me to believe that he knows, first, that this piece is an ironic gesture and, secondly, that he sometimes takes positions finally unacceptable to sensible human beings, a category that includes himself. For instance, the first performance of 4’33" theoretically granted him permission to explore the fullest range of sounds, both intentional and nonintentional, yet, even though 4’33" was in a fundamental sense artless, most of these subsequent works represent a synthesis. [19]

In Cage’s own writings, the largest number of statements regarding 4’33" are to be found, not surprisingly, in the essays that make up his 1961 book Silence. Most of them, like this one, support the idea of 4’33" not as music per se but as Zen-inspired commentary on the nature of music:

… when it is realized that sounds occur whether intended or not, one turns in the direction of those he does not intend. The turning is psychological and seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity – for a musician, the giving up of music. This psychological turning leads to the world of nature, where, gradually or suddenly, one sees that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together; that nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything was gained. [20]



Silence as Music / Music as Silence | James Wierzbicki (http://www.hud.ac.uk/schools/music+humanities/music/newmusic/review/silence.htm)

[MUX]

i, as many of you out there, have done personal cover versions of the above mentioned track several times..

[invisibleplanet]

Songwriter and producer Mike Batt talks to Mark Monahan about his strange legal tussle over the right to silence with the estate of John Cage (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;$sessionid$RZ4N3SL0 XHBDXQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=% 2Farts%2F2002%2F09%2F28%2Fbmma tt28.xml)

[Sheridan]

woodstock was in 69.

[pille'ocheoni]

sure was. and btw cage does rock. zorn too

[Sheridan]

have you ever read any of his books. some crazy stuff. really neat ideas.

[cmarakasu]

la monte young is presently "performing" a piece in which a series of oscillators will detune themselves in such a way as to play every possible combination of all the sounds in the harmonic series over the course of 5000 years. got really stoned and went to his dream house exhibit with my then-boyfrend several years ago. we got there at what i'm guessing was around three in the afternoon, and talked for what felt like an hour. when we left, the sun was setting, the sky feeling as purple as the lights inside, the sounds of the west village muted by the warm sinus drone what still played in my mind. we went back to our building and ate the chocolate cake i baked for lamonte, but was too shy to bring. it was a good day.

http://melafoundation.org/