The Merits of Modernism

Modernist music is a complicated genre; modernists felt the need to challenge the norms that existed during the tonality era of concert hall music. They did this by confronting tonality as well as rhythm, meter, timbre and such.  John Cage is a very experimental figure in Modernist music; no one doubts that. His ideas on what constitutes music certainly are worthy of much discussion. One should distinguish, however, between a genius composer and someone who merely speculates on music.

One of John Cage’s experimental pieces is titled 4’33” – it refers to the amount of time the piece should take to play. 4’33” consists of three movements, all of which are tacet. The musician approaches the piano, closes the lid and sits in silence for the previously mentioned amount of time. According to Cage, the ambient sound in the hall is supposed to be the music. Every concert, then, would be different. Cage wanted to draw attention to sounds that we would otherwise dismiss as background noise.

For a minute, put yourself in that concert hall. The pianist comes forth, sits down, and proceeds to remain silent for four minutes and 33 seconds. She then stands up, takes a bow, as if she had just played a difficult sonata, expecting applause. Were this a philosophy roundtable, such a display would be readily accepted. But in the realm of music composition, this is downright unacceptable. Writing a piece of music that requires nothing but silence is an easy cop-out. 

            Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, arguably the most influential (and famous) Classical and Romantic composers, were so highly regarded precisely because of their superb composition skills. They took their knowledge of music theory and wrote very good music with it. We don’t study John Cage in music theory classes. There’s a reason that Mozart and Beethoven continue to dominate concert halls today. The fact that their music vocabulary impresses us today says something about their talent.

            I’m not saying that atonality and arrhythmic composition is bad; on the contrary, composers such as Claude Debussy make good use out of both. The idea that nothing is something, however, just does not flow over into music. Cage wants us to pay attention to what we don’t hear. Imagine how ridiculous I would look if I turned in 15 pages of blank paper to a professor, asking him or her to pay attention to what I didn’t say.

            Don’t get me wrong; Cage’s philosophy is certainly a very interesting one, and his boldness deserves credit. But that’s where we should draw the line with Cage: let’s reward him for having innovative ideas, and recognize that he was a mediocre composer.