John Cage about silence

cage

• Category

  People & Blogs

[Anthony Silkoff]

You really should've made this video 15 seconds longer...

[DarthFennec]

It was obvious to me when I watched this that, when he talked about Mozart or Beethoven being "the same", he simply meant that every time you listen to a Mozart or Beethoven song it would always be the same song, a single song doesn't change on repeat listens. Traffic, on the other hand, sounds different, each and every time you listen to it, even if you're listening to the "same traffic" in the same location on the same day of the week, it's still not going to be the same as it was last week.

[esgPercussion]

Read a book sometime

[Xaltial]

_questions the relationship between where sound, noise ends and music begins. For a different kind of example: people often refer to the sounds of mating calls of whales, especially the humpback whale, as "songs". Of course they are not serious, but actually those "songs" do follow a certain kind of pattern. So am I trying to say that whales are composers too? No but maybe, nature itself is. Why not call music "the perception of sound that is subjectively enjoyed for different kinds of reasons"?

[Xaltial]

I am far from being an expert in western art music but I think I kind of "get" what Cage is trying to say. The notion of music is man-made. Music does not exist by itself in nature. So mankind uses the rules of physics to create instruments and music is "invented" as meaningful (meaningful as in created for the purpose of musical enjoyment) combinations of different patterns of sound. But once we explore the many possible musical genres throughout centuries, at last in 20th century someone___

[Josten Myburgh]

the act of listening, and of organising ones own perception of a situation, is a form of composition. to listen is to organise, and to organise sound is to create music.

[dakotafanning1106011]

I gotta say,this guy sounds like he has a brain deficiency. It sounds as though he's missing something in his mind that allows us to enjoy music so when he hears structured music he gets bored. When he hears unpredictable change its less boring. It's just a theory tho. If random sound is music to u then why even listen to cage. It just sounds like a bunch of egocentric people that can't admit they're hipsters. Without structure in art IT'S JUST SOUNDS. Why do u have those underground songs then?

[scifiNotSyfyFan]

My only problem with Cage is that he thinks sound is music. I don't think that's true, because I believe music is a pattern and structure of sounds in time. It is something that I believe has to be learned and practiced in order to get good at. Traffic is not structured and is does not have a definite pattern. The sound it produces cannot get any better than they are, and it is not learned.

[Aphten Milburn-Dobson]

I thought I was the only one who heard that!

[Ryan Donovan Purcell]

Did Cage popularize Dumchap's Philosophy of art at "process" rather than "object" ?

I read this in Kay Larson's bio on Cage and it did not sit well with me. I first encountered Duchamp from a surrealist pov, but his philosophy is innately zen. Did we need cage to figure that our?

[Zimmermitch]

There is no difference when you listen to Mozart or Beethoven when you listen from a CD, MP3 or any recorded material. But if you listen to live performances, you will notice that like traffic, there is no same performance. I'm a classical guitarist. Everytime I play the same classical guitar piece, there is always difference. I can get all the notes properly, timing, no mistakes but the attack differs.