John Cage's 4'33"
Why Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange recommends it
Music Stack Exchange answerers link it as a concrete example when arguing that composition can be defined as whatever sounds happen between two points in time, rather than requiring deliberate notes.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2017 to 2019.
What it is
A recorded performance of John Cage's 4'33" by William Marx at McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California, uploaded by Joel Hochberg. The description quotes composer John Adams on Cage's role in redefining what counts as music and links a New York Times review of a Cage biography.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Silence.
What people said
Cites Shev · 2017-09 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “Is dog/wolf howling considered “music”?”
I believe that no, it is not considered some kind of music. I'd say that this is something really personal. It Really depends on what you consider music. Music is not the same for everyone. John Cage used to say " Everything we do is music ", and he was the composer of 4'33" or Silence , which was a piece with no music for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. His thoughts on the piece was that every noise that is being made while the performer is performing the piece is considered music; so in a case like this, the howl might have been considered music. On the other hand, it was Stravinsky in Poetics of Music [LINK] that didn't consider nature sounds as 'music', because they lack structure. He consider
Cites Laurence · 2018-04 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “What is forward momentum?”
Tempo is an absolute, measurable value. 'Forward momentum' is a subjective description of a rather nebulous concept. In one way, all music has forward momentum - it exists on a time-scale that certainly can't go backwards! We could describe a Death March as having an inevitable, un-stoppable forward momentum. A Swing rhythm moves forward, but so does a Shuffle and so does the 'Four on the floor' of 'Sweet Caroline'. 'Clair de Lune' has a different sort of momentum, but the music still moves forward, you want to hear what comes next. There's even 'forward momentum' in 4'33" - if only because we will time forward to get it to finish! I think we just have to define 'forward momentum' as an attr
Cites LSM07 · 2019-03 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “To compose music, do you have to be able to hear?”
No, but it somewhat depends on how you define "composition" and "good." A common everyday example is when students are taught voice-leading rules in a university theory class and take a test on them, where it is unlikely they will have access to a piano for the exam (or at least, that was my experience, where we were to complete a chorale by filling in notes, purely by voice leading rules). A more poignant example is John Cage, who would roughly define a composition as whatever sounds happen between two points in time -- the driving idea behind his (in)famous composition 4'33" [this video] . Composers such as Milton Babbit, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and other serial music [LINK] compos