easy listening

So John Cage makes the charts with 4.33 and the BBC refuses to play it on the grounds that the listening public wouldn’t like to hear four minutes thirty three seconds of silence. It wouldn’t bother me, but the point is that the silence is instrumental: the lack of noise is supposed to enable you to listen to whatever happens to be going on in your life at the time. I mean, you don’t need music as a soundtrack to your life. It already has one. You just need to shut up and listen to it. As such, and released at this time of year, it’s the only authentic Christmas record ever to hit the charts: the puking, the tears, the drunken arguments, the distant wails of the vehicles of the various emergency services, whatever extrusions heartbreak, anxiety, futility and despair make into the human sensorium. It’s all there.

Comments

[ejh]

It's also instructive that the most celebrated piece Cage ever wrote is that to which he contributed the smallest quantity of music.

If only Pierre Boulez had thought of it.

[BenSix]

I think Christmas is wonderfully representative of the rest of life. Despite vague religious connotations no one's quite sure what it means, so they just struggle through with companions, entertainment and generous quantities of alcohol to keep their spirits up.

[Cian]

It's also instructive that the most celebrated piece Cage ever wrote is that to which he contributed the smallest quantity of music.

Well it is, but possibly not the way that you mean. You're still not going to admit that some people might genuinely like Boulez then...?

[BenSix]

It's just struck me that there are probably hundreds of people who are devising silences of quite breathtaking quality...

And we'll never know. *Sniff*

[ejh]

You're still not going to admit that some people might genuinely like Boulez then...?

I would want serious convincing that they find the music engaging, rather than the ideas.

Besides, there's all sorts of music that people genuinely like that's nevertheless meretricious trash.

[Doug]

Oh dear, poor Philistine me for thinking it's pretentious bollocks for middle class wankers to drool over.

[ejh]

Didn't we have this routine once before?

[Cian]

Well you didn't describe Boulez as meretricious, so that's novel I guess.

Doug unless those "middle class wankers" are sneering at you because of your musical tastes, I think you've got a serious insecurity complex going on there. It doesn't matter. Move on...

[john b]

That's the second time today I've seen "middle class" used as an insult towards someone's opinions, used in a context where their class is both unknown and completely irrelevant (the other one was someone claiming that only middle class wankers would use the word "nigger" to make a social comment about racism, whereas presumably true-blooded working class folk would administer a well-deserved beating to anyone who'd use such a word in any context. Fuck you, Lenny Bruce, you middle-class ponce, see how my boot feels. Etc).

I can only assume 'middle class' is being used here to mean 'not a complete fucking idiot', which seems like a bit of a retrogade step in a wide variety of ways.