4′33″

4’33”, the famous piece by John Cage composed in 1952, belongs to the repertoire of a musical current known as experimental music. Cage is interested not in the unique character of permanence or the unchanging aspect of the work, but in the unique character of the moment, which is one of the concepts of the I Ching. This is the opposite of the avant-garde composer, who wants to freeze the moment in order to preserve its unique character and allow the work to find a definitive and permanent form. The result is an upheaval of the notion of the primordial identity of a composition for the avant-gardes, a notion very different among experimental composers, for whom two versions of the same piece would have no perceptible musical fact in common.
Even so, “the performance of a composition that is indeterminate with respect to its performance is necessarily unique. It cannot be repeated. When it is performed a second time, its outcome is other than what it was. Thus nothing is accomplished by such a performance, since this performance cannot be grasped in temporal time”, says Cage.

As a result, recordings are misleading and representative only of one way of performing the piece

4’33” implies listening to what happens while the piece is being performed. It is precisely the moment of the performance that makes the work rich or poor, it does not matter. The hostile protests of the audience are just as interesting as the sounds produced by the performer, with the difference that the audience’s instinctive reactions are uncontrolled whereas the performer knows exactly what is being done, in a considered and controlled manner.
Cage aims at as deep an engagement of the listener as possible and at putting the listener’s faculties of perception to the test.

As indicated on the score, the piece is intended to be performed by any instrument or group of instruments.

At the premiere by David Tudor on 29 August 1952, at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York State, in a performance for solo piano, the audience saw him sit down at the piano, lift the lid and leave his hands above the keys of the instrument. After a moment, he closed the lid and stood up. The piece had been played and yet no sound had come out.
“[…] people started whispering to each other, and some started to walk out. They did not laugh – they were just irritated when they realised that nothing was going to happen, and they still have not forgotten it thirty years later: they are still angry.” writes David Revill in his book The Roaring Silence: John Cage, A Life.

The notion of time in each of the parts must be observed scrupulously, with the exception of the silences between the three parts
In David Tudor’s version, at the premiere in 1952, the silences and the separation between the parts are marked by the opening and closing of the piano lid.

The length of 4’33” was in fact designated by pure chance. And it is this duration that gives the work its title. However, although no evidence supports the following theory, it would seem that Cage chose this length deliberately. Indeed, four minutes and thirty-three seconds equals 273′, the opposite of the value in degrees Celsius of absolute zero (a negative temperature) at which no movement can occur. A sign of the desire to reach the dead point from which no sound can come. Another theory, from the philosopher and John Cage specialist Daniel Charles, suggests that 4’33” could be a ready-made à la Marcel Duchamp, given that John Cage was in France in the year the work was composed and that on AZERTY typewriter keyboards the 4 and the 3 correspond to the sign ‘ and the sign “ – signifying minute and second.