No.7

Some years ago some friends of mine made a commercial recording of 4’33”; the piece of music by John Cage which consists of nothing but silence.

They hired a church in which to do the recording and booked quite a well known pianist. They even had to do a retake when an ambulance drove by! Anyway, they then sold it to a juke box company so that people could buy silence when they went for a drink in their local pub (Many of the pubs in the UK play music quite loudly in the background).

I was doing some research for my book today. I was following up on John Cage and how he came to be so interested in the concept of silence. I would appear that in 1947 he conceived of piece which he was going to call Silent Prayer. This was a precursor to his controversial 4’33”. However it appears that is was his intention to sell it to the background music suppliers Muzak so that people could request silence instead of the usual gratuitous hotel lounge music.

Maybe there is no such thing as a new idea, only a new context!!