TheCDs wrote:So I was doing some reading and I came across a reference to John Cage, an experimental composer. At any rate I had forgotten about him and his experiments until now, specifically 4'33". For those unfamiliar with the piece, 4'33" is a four minute thirty-three second piece composed of three movements and written for any number and combination of instruments. The piece itself instructs the performers to not play a single note, the "music" being the sounds and noises that occur in the concert hall/venue.
Is that music?
Can an audience who is unaware of what is going on create music by simply making sounds, such as getting up and leaving?
Cage presents the idea that sound is itself music regardless of intent. I don't know if I agree with him completely on this but I can see some merit in his ideology.
I spent some time while writing this post with my windows open and listening to the sounds of my apartment, the apartments around me, the birds, and so forth. I could never say I felt I was listening to music, but there was a certain soothing element to the everyday sounds. The chirping birds, the hum of a refrigerator, people walking down the hallway, they all had a strange calming effect. If music is defined as sound that elicits some emotional response then surely I was listening to music.
This is a topic I love discussing because I love to really think about and try to grasp the idea of sound, noise, and music. What makes them different, the same, related, and unrelated?
It's a simple thing as far as I'm concerned. If somebody presents something as art, or as music, then it is. Of course, it is down to an observer, a listener, to formulate a response. I think it's entirely valid to crumple up a piece of paper, throw it in the middle of a room and call it a piece of art. The issue I think is one of depth of expression, which is in itself a tricky thing to define because it's so subjective.
I do not think environmental sounds are "music" unless presented as such. There is a kind of musical sense to nature, since music is defined by natural law and inspired by the world around us, but as far as I understand it, music requires some level of intent, whether that is in complex scores for multiple instruments or in the case of Cage's 4'33", introducing a framing structure to unpredictable sounds. After all, the fact that there are musicians, that there is an audience, that there is an event in which the two interact, that is the framing device for any piece of music. If you remove the audience, if you remove the musicians (or musical source), then it fails as a medium.
But provided you have these three elements, the audience, the musical source, and then event itself (often simply the act of listening) it becomes music. You could decide to listen to birdsong as music. Then it is music. But otherwise, it is just sound.
Although I should point out that there is a difference between let's say, listening to speech and listening to music. The same elements are there, but rather than focussing on the rhythm, the melody, the tonal qualities of the sound, you are primarily interested in the meaning of the words, and the musical qualities of the voice are secondary, inflecting and modulating.
