John Cages 4-33 Analysis

John Cage’s 4’33” is a famous piece of avant-garde music. Its radical nature challenges the conventions of music, and to this day confuses and frustrates the masses. Still the question remains, does it have any value, and how does one understand it?
John Cage’s 4’33” has valuable for music industry. One can certainly be argued that the piece is not music; I have trouble deciding whether the piece is classifiable as music. Regardless, it still has value for the music world. It is a piece that helps to paint a better understanding of the avant-garde movement. There is a path clear path that can be traced, leading up to the composition and display of 4’33”. It was the radicalization of aleatoric music, which lead up to this work. This was as removed

While perhaps this is not a value that is not super important to the world, it is important to me. I become happy when I think about and listen to this piece. Perhaps some of my entertainment comes from the fact that this piece infuriated many people. Subversion is one of my favorite forms of humor, and that is what this piece does best. It destroys the expectation that music will be played. While I am not fond of sitting in silence for longer than a minute or so, the piece is fun to think about through the lens of musicology. However, I also just like the idea that Cage worked many years on this piece, and devoted his time to explaining it. The piece entertains me, perhaps not in the way Cage desired, but nonetheless, because it entertains me, it has personal value.
Kyle Gann is a music professor who wrote an entire book on 4’33”, where he tries to explore the piece as thoroughly as possible. He comes up with several explanations that can be used to understand the

I am fond of the idea that 4’33” is the response to the physical art movement, in the music world. While this aspect of the piece is difficult to argue, my reasons for believing this piece is at least partially Dada are as followed. First of all, John Cage were good friends many different famous modern artists. He was friends with Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Willem DeKooning, who were massive names in the modern art era. In fact, for a short amount of time he lived with Peggy Guggenheim, whose name is still associated with modern art. While this is not proof that the piece is related to Dadaism, it is proof that he was well-acquainted with the latest movements in the art world. It would not be a stretch to assume that John Cage and his artist friends inspired one another. Even the textbook notes the similarities between Cage’s silent piece and Rauschenberg’s White Panel Painting. Furthermore, this piece looks like quite a few other Dada, and performance based art pieces, such as I Like America and America Likes Me, by Joseph Beuys, where there is a written plan/score, and those instructions are the most critical aspect of the piece. Hence, it does at least have some association in part with Dadaism, and with modern