John Cage
4'33"

...silence becomes something else... not silence at all, but sounds, environmental sounds. The nature of these silences is unpredictable and changeable... There are sounds destined to be heard, and forever, as long as there are ears to hear. When these ears are in connection with a mind that has nothing to do, such a mind is free to enter into the act of listening, hearing each sound as it is, not as a phenomenon that more or less approaches a preconception.

                                                                                John Cage - Silence 

John Cage in Italy is mostly remembered for his participation in "Lascia o Raddoppia" as a mycology expert and for his bizarre performance with some coffee pots*.

In the world, including Italy, music lovers and Avantgarde experts remember John Cage as one of the fundamental composers of the 20th century: inventor of the prepared piano, precursor of aleatory music, prophet of certain music that from the '30s onwards would become widespread not only among classical music composers but also among those labeled as light music composers. Just remember the Greek Demetrio Stratos of the group Area, who worked on some vocal compositions made by Cage. He was a volcano of innovation, internalizing all the musical theories of his time, exasperating them, pushing them to the extreme consequences, to destroy every sort of musical form and question everything. The "hotspot" of the American musician's compositional activity is the now-famous 4'33", a composition for piano in three movements.

The composition mainly has two purposes, one more ironic, the other more theoretical. The first is to mock the attitude of some pianists who, before starting a concert, sit in front of the piano with the keyboard still closed, granting themselves a few moments of silence that often become minutes: this habit is highlighted in the score of the composition, where there is, as an indication for the instrumentalist, a dry and monolithic "tacet". The second recalls what was said before about the nature of Cage as a theorist and requires a brief historical reminder.

Music until now had always had a very precise composition scheme: setting the base key and constructing harmony on it. Arnold Schönberg with twelve-tone music took the first step for the destruction of this scheme, Cage took the logical next step. Music is no longer perceived as an arrangement through conventional laws of sounds but rather the production of involuntary sounds, where the core of this conception, the "stave" of this new music, becomes silence, which for what was said before, if there are sounds caused accidentally, silence as the absence of sound frequencies cannot exist. Thus, besides a new conception of music, sound, harmony, there is also a new conception of silence: it is the interval where involuntary sounds materialize, forming the composition and thus becoming Music.

4'33" besides being a composition for piano becomes a composition for pianist and audience, where the noises provoked at the very moment of listening become an integral part of the work, thus encompassing the field of sonic research in a broader space. No longer the orchestra, no longer the composition, but the Cosmos. Losing oneself in 4'33" of silence is crossing the schematisms that have so far regulated, in good and bad faith, music from the Middle Ages onwards, to rediscover a primitive genuineness never regained, sometimes touched, but always with a note of disappointment.

With 4'33" John Cage brings us back into the dreamtime of Western music, and who knows, perhaps also to find ourselves again.

*The first video is not in reference to the Italian television program, but is one of the many exempla of the audience's reaction to Cage's compositional inventions.