Top Musicians Record 4 Minutes 33 Seconds Of Silence For UK Christmas Charity Single
Billy Bragg, Suggs, Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard, dance act Orbital, rave rockers Enter Shikari and other top UK musicians came together recently under the tongue in cheek moniker Cage Against the Machine to record an almost silent cover of John Cage's experimental song 4'33". Cage's composition is itself a recording of silence and some believe that this new version is a serious contender to be the #1 holiday single.
The recording for charity hopes to emulate the success of last year’s Facebook driven Rage Against the Machine's Christmas #1 campaign aimed at keeping a much schmaltzier X-Factor (a UK American Idol clone) Christmas single from reaching #1. "4.33” of silence hopes to deny this year’s X-Factor the top spot as well.
"Managing to get this many egos in a room and getting them all to stay quiet is a hell of an achievement,” the organiser, XFM DJ Eddy Temple-Morris to The Guardian. "It felt quite emotional to me. In this age of noise, to hear silence is an inspiring and beautiful thing."
My understanding is that Cage did not intend 4’33” to be a “recording of silence” but instead 4’33” is a way to turn attention off the performer and raise the audiences awareness of all the sounds already present in the performance space. It is not an exercise in silence, but rather a composition about how much ambient sound is always present in any space.
Bang on, eJah. There’s an amazing anecdote in Cage’s book, Silence. He went into Harvard University’s anechoic chamber, a soundproof room without any reflective surfaces. But he was convinced that it wasn’t soundproof, because he heard a high singing note and a deep rumbling/pulsing while in there. He later found out that the high note was his nervous system, and the rumbling/pulsing was his bloodflow. He came to the conclusion that silence is non-existent (perhaps it only exists for those without hearing).