4' 33''
I wouldn't like to let the year ebb away without recalling that 50 years ago, the great John Cage "wrote" his 4' 33'', an audacious composition comprising four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. His radical idea was that whatever sounds listeners heard during the performance constituted the music.
How interesting that two young Irish composers, Donnacha Dennehy and Jennifer Walshe selected Cage's 4' 33'' to be performed as part of their "Composer's Choice" concerts at the National Concert Hall in Dublin this year. A coincidental remembrance? Or a commentary on music, sound, noise, volume and the din of the modern world?
Ireland is no different now from other industrial societies in that daily life is filled with intrusive sounds: traffic, construction, alarms, mobile phones?.This roaring, grinding, rattling and humming is relentless and it would appear that amplification has come to be equated with emancipation. Of course, it might well be that the loudness is less and expression of confidence than one of silent fears. Perhaps people who are unsure about their direction use sound as a barrier (the aggressive thump-thump emanating from that fellow commuter's Walkman) or as a comforter (supermarket Vivaldi). Perhaps some up-and-coming composers can use these developments to build on what John Cage achieved in 1952.
