Bitter Sweet Silent Symphony

BBC Radio 3 will be airing more than four minutes of complete silence on Friday… by design.

Avante-Garde or just pretentious wankery?

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is to give a performance of composer John Cage’s seminal piece 4’33”, which does not contain a single note.

Radio 3 is to broadcast the entire composition live, even having to switch off its emergency system which cuts in when there is apparent silence.

The performance takes place on Friday night at London’s Barbican Centre.

It is part of a weekend of Cage’s work. The late avant-garde composer “wrote” the piece in 1952.

So you can write silence?

Wait, so if I sit in silence could his estate sue me for an unauthorised public performance of his work? There’s a mindfuck for you…

The best quote is:

Mr Hughes denied the performance was a “mindless gimmick” and said Cage believed “music was all around us all the time” and the piece was his attempt to make the audience focus on sounds that were “part of our everyday lives”.

But the audience at the premiere was “so discomforted that mostly what you could hear was people getting up and walking out”, he said.

“They were completely outraged and extremely angry,” Mr Hughes added.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “Money for Nothing” doesn’t it?