John Cage's most famous musical composition is called 4'33".
It consists of the pianist going to the piano, and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. (He uses a stopwatch to time this.) In other words, the entire piece consists of silences -- silences of different lengths, they say.
On the one hand, as a musical piece, 4'33" leaves almost no room for the pianist's interpretation: as long as he watches the stopwatch, he can't play it too fast or too slow; he can't hit the wrong keys; he can't play it too loud, or too melodramatically, or too subduedly.
On the other hand, what you hear when you listen to 4'33" is more a matter of chance than with any other piece of music -- nothing of what you hear is anything the composer wrote.
Ned said:Pretentious crap if you ask me
Downloaded Penguin said:
Lord Bracknell said:I congratulate Downloaded Penguin for waiting 1 hour and 4 minutes before responding to Sussex Spur's original message.
And then having nothing of his own to say.
Sublime.