[Danny Tse]

Read it here.

Personally, I prefer the BBC Symphony Orchestra's version of John Cage's 4'33", but I am getting the surviving member of The Beatles and The Who together for a rousing rendition of this classic tune.

[John Watson]

One of my earlier musical purchases was Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence".

I recall a thread a long time ago (on HTF I believe) about a suit concerning unauthorized use of Cage's "composition".

On silence as a musical activity, audience attention must be an issue. I bet you can hear pins dropping, yawns escaping, and ear wax being picked.

In this case, would Appple do anything about my hard drive drone, and the clatter of fans?

[Danny Tse]

A six-figure payment settled the lawsuit.

Quote:

"Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

The above from the guy who got sued for "plagiarism" of 4"33"

[Neil White]

Shhh! Someone might hear

N

[MickeS]

NPR had an interesting story about the composition of the piece "4:33". Listen to it here: http://discover.npr.org/features/fea...l?wfId=1073885

May 8, 2000

Each week we bring you a story from the NPR 100 -- the 100 most significant American musical works of the 20th century. Writer Will Hermes presents the story behind the musical composition 4:33 (Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds), by John Cage. The piece was premiered in 1952, and consisted of a pianist sitting down at a keyboard, closing the lid, setting a stopwatch, and sitting, in silence, for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Many musicians and critics thought the piece was a joke. But the pianist who never played a note called it one of the most intense listening experiences he ever had. In many ways the experience of 4:33 teaches us about the nature of sound, and silence, and the act of listening to the musicality of ambience that can be heard in silence. And Hermes tells us about the influence the composition had on music written in the last 50 years.

[John Watson]

Since Danny posted this story, I came acoss a brief article on "silence" per se, in connection with this piece of "music", which pointed out that we don't know what silence is, because even in relative silence, we hear our own pulse, blood circulating in our ears etc.

Almost a case of beware of what you wish for, you may get it...

[Yee-Ming]

Nuts. Just go to the public library and (hopefully) hear a live performance for free, as long as you like

Reminds me of a story a software engineer working on sound cards once told me, his team thought they'd cleverly come across a way to save reduce the size of audio files by saving silent bits by indicating length of silence, instead of saving the usual periodic samples (which would of course all say the same thing). Turns out the method was already patented (which they didn't know at the time), so their company had to fork over royalties for using the method.

[DeanWalsh]

I'm waiting for P. Diddy to sample this for his next joint... lol