Watch John Cage’s 4’33”: The full orchestra version
OrchestrasConductor: Jonathon Heyward.
Going viral, some year soon.
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Billy: ‘I’m sure I can do it better, much better!’
I have the stunning 12″ disco remix.
I really much prefer the Dubstep mix! ♥
I was ripped off when I bought the score (decades ago). They charged me £5.25.
It seemed quite clear that the fair price should have been £4.33
Stop sniggering at the back!
Maestro Billy: ‘Some years ago, Edition Peters published a special edition of 4’33” commemorating the 100th birthday of John Cage. It includes all published versions of 4’33” in format 21.5 x 28 cm, all 36 pages of 4’33″, and I can’t find that version for 14 instruments played by the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. This must be a forgery. Simply revolting!
Indeed. You can hear it’s an arrangement. And Cage never wrote for that combination because he could never recall the differences between the instruments. The story goes that he first wrote it for full symphony orchestra, but got mixed-up, then through a slow process of thinning and concentration he arrived at the version for solo violin, and then hit upon the brilliant idea to score it for piano solo, which nobody had ever done before with the material.
For reference recordings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k8Q8jwq7MM
You forgot to read Cage’s performance notes.
“…the work may be performed by an instrumentalist or any combination of instrumentalists…”
Dr Billy: ‘Yes, of course, but he later called this version is 0’00”, and it can be performed by a microphone as well, that can be on eller off.’
No, that was on the strong insistence of the publisher who wanted the work be available for different combinations – which would boost sales.
Actually, the piece sounds different in every different combination.
Jonathon Heyward practising Tai Chi? Notice the audience members photographing/filming on their mobiles, and someone (3rd row right) gesticulating presumably whilst having a conversation with the neighbour whose head is turned towards the centre. I would have thought that the audience’s appropriate response whould have been silent “jazz hands” instead of applause.
How many times do you think the people making videos will watch it?
This stunning performance looks like the result of rigorous rehearsing: how else could the musicians have managed to suppress all chuckles and keep a straight face throught those long five 4’ 33”?
I wonder what John Cage would have made out of it. I remember him answering an audience question about how he conceived the work: eventually he mentioned he didn’t have to work on some parameters, pitch; he broke into a big, lighthearted laughter. Cambridge, MA, 1988.
That’s not bad but I’ve heard better performances of the piece. Needs a full string section to do it justice and probably should have had more rehearsals.
Emperors New Clothes. After nearly forty years as a professional orchestral musician, we still snigger at this ubiquitous work!
Wonderful tone
I have seen an arrangement prepared for Young Bands and Orchestras: 2’ 16.5”
There are probably more jokes about this piece than earnest commentaries.
I’d like to think that Cage created this as a sly answer to the sloth of then-contemporary musical trends… to out-lazy the lazy.
But no, he never admitted to that and, alas, its notoriety seems to have given permission to later generations for more lazy and careless music-making.
N.b. I had it on two sides of 78 record…
Even more rare is the 8 track release.
Impressive. He performed it from memory!
I find the intense silence of performers and audience interesting and curious. Cage was American, and accustomed to Americans’ concert-hall behavior: coughing, shifting position, maybe whispers… and those would seem to be the point of the piece: bringing ambient sound into the foreground, and making clear that those are part of the sound-world of *any* piece. The Herford audience seems to defeat the purpose.
Every time the piece is performed in Germany, the silence is deafening, opening like an aural black hole, raising emotional tension to an unbearable degree. Once, at a performance in Osnabrück in 2017, one desperate audience member screamed ‘Help!’ at 3’24” and was applauded separately when he was called on stage afterwards.
The audience is too mature, nary a giggle.
The pianist and former artistic director of the Macao Festival Adriano Jordao told me of a performance of the work in Lisbon many years ago with a pianist sitting motionless at the instrument. Cage was in the audience and the following day gave a lecture to music students followed by a Q&A session. One student told the composer he had been deeply impressed by the work and then asked, “Would you mind if I wrote a similar work but with a length of just over 6 minutes?” John Cage said he would be delighted, but suggested with tongue in cheek “you might consider writing is for violin rather than piano!”
I love the encore starting at 4’48”.