“Everything we do is music“

When we think of music the first things that come to our mind usually are sounds that are arranged in a way that creates order out of chaos through elements of melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. In case of John Cage’s piece named “4’33” the audience is confronted with the questions of whether music that does not contain such elements can still be considered music, whether music can be more or less than just sound arrangements.

In my honest opinion, at first, I thought this was meant to be a joke, as though Cage’s intentions were to parody musical conventions even the ones’ of American avantgarde music. A play “where the performer does absolutely nothing” while “being presented in a full orchestral version” sounded more like a prank to me where in the end the hidden cameras would be shown to the audience. I thought I could even tell it was by the presenters smirking attempt to suppress his laugh while introducing the performance. Unfortunately, I believe that this first thought or impression influenced the way I thought about the piece. Even after a couple of listening attempts, I could not let go of the idea that this could be meant as a prank. Even though I can see and understand that it can very well be considered a genius way of performing an affirmation of life in the sense of John Cage’s vision, which accordingly shifts the focus from the expected musical performance to the sounds that occur i.e., in the audience during the non-performance, I appear to be too much of a listener of conventional music to consider it music. When I listen (or in this case not listen) to any music I expect to feel emotions the piece may attempt to evoke and not make something up for myself. I must submit to my own contradicting arguments because of course it does make me feel some things but not the way I would prefer to be affected which tends to be conventional music. To compare it to some form of contemporary abstract art: Some people may be fascinated by e.g., a blank white canvas; unfortunately, I personally, however, am unable to make much use of it.