Listening... to the sound of silence

I still remember the first time I listened to John Cage’s 4’33’’. I was in the Oberstufe, 11^th grade, music “Leistungskurs”. We wrote an exam that counted for the Abitur. I flipped over the page and read the first task which was something like: “Watch the YouTube Video of John Cage’s 4’33’’. Write an analysis of the piece using the video as the basis.” My first thought was “easy”, as I was good at analyzing traditional musical pieces and thought this class test perfectly fits my abilities and skills. When the video started, there was an orchestra ready to play, an audience waiting curiously. The conductor walked in, arranged the score sheets in front of him, raised his baton. And then there was me – waiting patiently for the piece to start. Waiting – waiting a little longer, getting nervous, fidgeting with my pen, looking around to see the faces of my classmates. Is the video paused or is the internet connection unstable? Then I saw a smirk on my teachers face and the conductor and the musicians flipping the score sheets. I was estranged. And shocked. I felt like I was in Hans Christian Andersen’s Tale “The Emperor's New Clothes” – but instead of dumb people not seeing the emperor’s clothes I felt like dumb people might not hear Cage’s music. How am I supposed to write an analysis about 4 minutes and 33 seconds of “nothing”? Of silence? I never forgot that moment, that piece of music and that composer in contrast to other composers we talked about in class.

However, we got the chance to rewatch the video for the exam. And the second time I realized, that 4’33’’ is not “nothing” and it is also not “silence”. And suddenly I was able to write an analysis and my pen didn’t stop touching my paper for the next two lessons.

That was the moment I realized that silence is not really what I perceived as silence before. For me, silence was, when no one talked or there was no music playing. However, silence is the absolute absence of sound. At first, I thought I heard nothing while watching the video of 4’33’’, but suddenly I realized that there was actually a lot to hear. In the video, there were people in the audience coughing, whispering, giggling, fidgeting and the conductor and the orchestra flipping pages, moving their baton or instruments without really playing them. Also in the classroom, there was no silence, no absolute absence of sound. I could hear me fidgeting with my pen, my one neighbor breathing heavily, my other neighbor’s belly growling and other classmates playing with the sheets of paper or their pens. There seems to be silence, yet you can hear so much. Cage’s 4’33’’ sharpens our focus, attention and perception of the world around us and builds awareness for all the sounds we can actually hear when we seem to hear “nothing”.

Additionally, it has sharpened my sense for time. When I was sitting there watching the video for the first time, it felt like time was standing still. The “silence” stretched the 4’33’’ like chewing gum and I questioned my senses. My eyes saw an orchestra in an orchestra hall with a huge audience – but my ears did not hear what I expected to hear. 

What is particularly interesting about 4’33’’ is that the piece is always in severe ways performed by the audience and the environment only limited by the time frame of 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Therefore, no performance of 4’33’’ is the same. Through the individual sounds produced by audience and environment, the piece is constantly rewritten. Thus, the listener is as involved in the piece as the performer – or to go even further – the listener becomes the performer of the piece.

After our music exam we shortly talked about John Cage and his piece 4’33’’ and the environment in which the premiere of his composition took place. His decision for experimenting on an unsuspecting concert audience showed that the prestigious venue and the composer’s social status heightened the listeners’ expectations for the piece. Thus, the audience was more focused on Cage’s composition and the perception of 4’33’’ was already predetermined by the social setup of the concert. Additionally, the rules and regulations of the concert hall provided a large audience to quietly sit and listen to 4 minutes and 33 seconds of ambient sounds. However, it would have also been interesting to see reactions to Cage’s piece in another ambience. For example, for me, it was a different experience to watch the video hearing the sounds the audience makes and listening to Cage’s 4’33’’ on Spotify as the only listener at that specific moment having the chance to concentrate on all the sounds surrounding me. John Cage successfully showed that any sounds may constitute music.