"traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg, Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, George Antheil (in his earliest works only), Alban Berg, Henry Cowell (in his earliest works), Philip Glass, Harry Partch, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Richard Strauss (in his earliest work), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and Iannis Xenakis. Although most avant-garde composers have been men, this is not exclusively the case. Women avant-gardists include Pauline"
"John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ""4′33″"", which"
"An oft cited notable example of the dilemma in defining music is a work entitled ""4'33"""" (1952) by the American composer John Cage (1912–1992). The written score has three movements and directs the performer(s) to appear on stage, indicate by gesture or other means when the piece begins, then make no sound and only mark sections and the end by gesture. What is heard are only whatever ambient sounds may occur in the room. Some argue this is not music because, for example, it contains no sounds that are conventionally considered ""musical"" and the composer and performer(s) exert no control"
"""4′33″"". The score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece—four minutes, thirty-three seconds—and is meant to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived ""a silent piece"" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed, the premiere (given by Tudor on August 29, 1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience. The reaction to ""4′33″"" was just a part of the larger picture: on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that"
"the rise of American minimalism in music paralleled the rise of minimalism as an artistic style, which used the contrast of black and white, the gradual movement of shading with gradients, and also often repeated concepts and themes. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Postmodern music Movement would see the rise of composers such American composers like John Cage who adopted atonal structures and took an experimental approach to music composition, most famously and controversially with his 1952 piece 4'33"", for which there are no notes written on the page and the music is described to consist of the sounds"
"the piece, so that Cage has no way of controlling what ambient sounds will be heard by the audience. The premiere of the three-movement ""4′33″"" was given by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, in Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock, New York, as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. The audience saw him sit at the piano and, to mark the beginning of the piece, close the keyboard lid. Some time later he opened it briefly, to mark the end of the first movement. This process was repeated for the second and third movements. The piece remains controversial to"
"and seconds of a given performance, ""4′33″"" being the total length of the first public performance. Conceived around 1947–48, while the composer was working on ""Sonatas and Interludes"", ""4′33″"" became for Cage the epitome of his idea that any sounds may constitute music. It was also a reflection of the influence of Zen Buddhism, which Cage studied since the late 1940s. In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that ""4′33″"" was, in his opinion, his most important work. ""The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"" describes ""4′33″"" as Cage's ""most famous and controversial creation"". Silence"
"John Cage's composition ""4'33"""", in which an audience sits through four and a half minutes of ""silence"" (Cage 1973), that represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, ""noise music"", as with ""4'33"""", is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between ""desirable"" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable ""noise"" that make up all noise music from Erik Satie to NON to Glenn Branca. Writing about Japanese noise music, Hegarty suggests that ""it is not a genre, but it is also a genre that is multiple, and characterized by this very multiplicity ..."
"Symphony No. 4 (Rouse) Symphony No. 4 is an orchestral composition in two movements by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, for which Rouse was then composer-in-residence. The piece was completed June 30, 2013 and was premiered on June 5, 2014, in Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Alan Gilbert. Regarding the inspiration of the work and whether the symphony had a programmatic intent, Rouse has remained deliberately ambiguous. In the program notes to the score, he commented: The symphony has a duration"
"Concerto 4-3 Concerto 4-3 is a concerto for two violins, double bass, and orchestra in three movements by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned for the string trio Time for Three by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra. It was first performed in Philadelphia on January 10, 2008, by Time for Three and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. ""Concerto 4-3"" blends elements of bluegrass music with traditional classical music. The title is a word play on the fact that the piece was written for the string trio Time for"
"this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music. In defining noise music and its value, Paul Hegarty in ""Noise/Music: A History"" (2007) contends that Cage's ""4′33″"" represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, noise music, as with ""4′33″"", is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between ""desirable"" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable ""noise"" that make up all noise music. ""4′33″"" challenges, or rather exploits to a radical extent, the social regiments of the modern concert life etiquette, experimenting on unsuspecting concert-goers to prove an important point."
"I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'."" In an introduction to an article called On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Works, John Cage writes ""To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later."" Compositions that, like ""4′33″"", include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following: The musicologist Richard Taruskin has argued that ""4′33″"" is an example of automatism. Since the Romantic Era composers have been striving to produce music that could be separated from any social connections, transcending the boundaries of"
"musical influences and is himself acknowledged as an authority on Cage. For the composer's centenary in 2012 he was invited by the John Cage Trust and the Sydney Opera House to deliver a lecture in that landmark building on Cage's seminal 'silent' piece 4'33"". Timed to last 43 minutes and 30 seconds, the lecture was called 'probing' by Limelight magazine. ""It took four years for Cage to write the piece, to master the courage and rationale behind it"", he said. Lyle Chan received a Bachelor of Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studied music with Conrad Pope, J."
"of Stravinsky's ""Rite of Spring"", this would consist of widespread dissatisfaction leading up to violent riots. In Cage's ""4′33″"", the audience felt cheated by having to listen to no composed sounds from the performer. Nevertheless, in ""4′33″"" the audience contributed the bulk of the musical material of the piece. Since the piece consists of exclusively ambient noise, the audience's behavior, their whispers and movements, are essential elements that fill the above-mentioned time buckets. In a 2013 TED Talk, philosophy professor Julian Dodd argues that ""4′33″"" is witty conceptual art, but does not meet the criteria for it to count as"
"and Merce Cunningham. In 1953 Cage dedicated to Kremen the score of ""4'33"""" in proportional notation, as later he also did the ""Tacet"" versions of ""4'33"""", the published editions of the so-called ""silent piece"". During that time he married Barbara Herman whom he had met at a Cage concert; completed a B.A. at The New School for Social Research; and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Harvard University. With his wife Barbara Kremen and their two children he left Cambridge for a professorial position on the faculty of the Psychology Department at Michigan State University. Two"
"First, the choice of a prestigious venue and the social status of the composer and the performers automatically heightens audience's expectations for the piece. As a result, the listener is more focused, giving Cage's ""4′33″"" the same amount of attention (or perhaps even more) as if it were Beethoven's Ninth. Thus, even before the performance, the reception of the work is already predetermined by the social setup of the concert. Furthermore, the audience's behavior is limited by the rules and regulation of the concert hall; they will quietly sit and listen to 4′33” of ambient noise. It is not easy"
"be heard as ""an intensifying dispute, accompanied by a rising sense of intoxication"". Each instrument has its own repertory of pitch intervals and its own structural speed. A polyrhythm of 12:126:175:98 governs the structure of the entire composition, usually resulting in rhythmic relations of 8:6:5:7 (the cello plays septuplets nearly all the time). Typical running time - 24' String Quartet No. 4 (Carter) The Fourth String Quartet by American composer Elliott Carter was composed in 1985–86 in New York City and Rome, and completed in June 1986. It was premiered on September 17, 1986 at Festival Miami, University of Miami,"
"intriguing 20-minute work structured in two connected movements of vastly contrasting character: the first bustling and seemingly cheerful, the second grim and despairing."" Tommasini further commented: Symphony No. 4 (Rouse) Symphony No. 4 is an orchestral composition in two movements by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, for which Rouse was then composer-in-residence. The piece was completed June 30, 2013 and was premiered on June 5, 2014, in Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Alan Gilbert. Regarding the inspiration of the work and"
"heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."" Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. ""Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."" The realization as he saw it of the impossibility of silence led to the composition of ""4′33″"". Another cited influence for this piece came from"
"historic Kings Road House in celebration of the work's 50th anniversary. Several performances of ""4′33″"" including a ""techno remix"" by New Waver were broadcast on Australian radio station ABC Classic FM, as part of a program exploring ""sonic responses"" to Cage's work. The Swedish electronic band Covenant concluded their 2000 album ""United States of Mind"" with a rendition of ""4′33″"" entitled ""You Can Make Your Own Music"". On January 16, 2004, at the Barbican Centre in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the UK's first orchestral performance of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and"
"Symphony No. 4 (Schuman) The Symphony No. 4 is an orchestral symphony by the American composer William Schuman. The work was composed on a Guggenheim Fellowship grant awarded to Schuman in 1939. The piece was given its world premiere by the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Artur Rodziński on January 22, 1942. The symphony has a duration of roughly 25 minutes and is composed in three numbered movements. The work is scored for a large orchestra comprising three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets,"
"Symphony No. 4 (Schnittke) Russian composer Alfred Schnittke wrote his Symphony No. 4 in 1983. It is a choral symphony, written for tenor, countertenor, chorus, and orchestra. It was first performed on April 12, 1984, in Moscow. The symphony is written in a single movement of 22 variations and is approximately 45 minutes in length. Ronald Weitzman writes, ""The form of Schnittke's Fourth Symphony [is] at once cross-shaped and spherical... The composer draws musically on the three main strands of Christianity—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant—while underlying this is a three–note semitone interval motif representing synagogue chant, thus symbolizing the Jewish source of"
"from the piece. Quatuor pour la fin du temps Quatuor pour la fin du temps (), also known by its English title Quartet for the End of Time, is a piece of chamber music by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. It was premiered in 1941. The piece is scored for clarinet (in B-flat), violin, cello, and piano; a typical performance of the complete work lasts about 50 minutes. Messiaen wrote the piece while a prisoner of war in German captivity and it was first performed by his fellow prisoners. It has come to be recognized as one of his most"
"music, instead challenging the listener to question what the nature of music is. In a 2013 TED Talk, psychologist Paul Bloom puts forward ""4′33″"" as one example to show that knowing about the origin of something influences our opinion about it as ""that silence is different from other forms of silence"". Several versions of the score exist: There are four known later versions, one of which is in the New York Public Library. There is some discrepancy between the lengths of individual movements of the premiere performance, specified in different versions of the score. The Woodstock printed program specifies the"
"Three. Additionally, the movements are titled after rivers in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where Higdon first experienced bluegrass music in her youth. ""Concerto 4-3"" has a duration of roughly 20 minutes and is composed in three movements: The work is scored for a soli trio of two violins and double bass and an orchestra comprising two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, two percussionists, and strings. Joe Banno of ""The Washington Post"" called ""Concerto 4-3"" ""a punchy, engaging work"" and wrote, ""Not a particularly deep or groundbreaking piece,"
"the inspiration for the work, Stucky recalled: The piece is scored for choir, orchestra, and four vocal soloists cast in historic roles: A performance of ""August 4, 1964"" lasts approximately 70 minutes. The work is composed in twelve movements: Reviewing world premiere of ""August 4, 1964"", James R. Oestreich of ""The New York Times"" praised the piece as ""a complex tribute to a complex man with a deeply divided legacy"" and added, ""Mr. Scheer created a tapestry of overlapping streams of consciousness, and Mr. Stucky responded with a varied, colorful and mercurial score."" Alex Ross of ""The New Yorker"" said"
"originally consisted of one sentence: ""In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action."" At the first performance Cage had to write that sentence. The second performance added four new qualifications to the directions: ""the performer should allow any interruptions of the action, the action should fulfill an obligation to others, the same action should not be used in more than one performance, and should not be the performance of a musical composition."" In late 1989, three years before his death, Cage revisited the idea of ""4′33″"" one last time. He composed ""One"", the full title of which"
"dance piece for it. The involvement of photographers including Lee Miller, Carl Van Vechten, and George Platt Lynes in documenting and representing the opera and its original performances in 1934 is explored in Allmer and Sears' book ""4 Saints in 3 Acts: A Snapshot of the American Avant-garde in the 1930s"" (2017, Manchester University Press) which will accompany an exhibition of photographs and ephemera at The Photographers' Gallery in London, in October 2017. Four Saints in Three Acts Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera by American composer Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Written in 1927-8,"
"Symphony No. 4 (Hartmann) The Fourth Symphony of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann is a work for string orchestra. It was completed in 1946-7. It was derived in part from an earlier Concerto for strings and soprano written in 1938. Hartmann revised the work to include a new purely instrumental third and closing movement, marked ""Adagio appassionato"". The second movement, ""Adagio di molto, risoluto"", contains several references to Hartmann's own First String Quartet of 1933. A typical performance lasts around 33 minutes. The work was premiered in this form by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hans Rosbaud in"
"""this work represents American Romanticism at its best."" Symphony No. 4 (Hanson) Symphony No. 4 Op. 34, ""Requiem"" (1943) by Howard Hanson (1896–1981) is Hanson's fourth symphony. It was inspired by the death of his father, taking its movement titles from sections of the Requiem Mass. He was awarded the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for Music, unanimously selected by the jury, for the piece. Hanson regarded it as his finest work. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on December 3, 1943, conducted by the composer and the radio premiere was January 2, 1944 by the NBC Symphony Orchestra with"
"this year with a hope of [reaching Number One]"" by ""The Guardian"" journalist Tom Ewing in September. XFM DJ Eddy Temple-Morris also voiced his support on his blog, as did Luke Bainbridge. This version of Cage's work failed to make number 1, but charted at number 21 on the UK Singles Chart. Audio App 4′33″ 4′33″ (pronounced ""Four minutes, thirty-three seconds"" or just ""Four thirty-three"")<ref name=""Solomon 1998/2002"">Solomon 1998/2002.</ref> is a three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs the performer(s) not to play"
"year later in 1952, Cage applied his aleatoric methods to tape-based composition. Also in 1952, Karlheinz Stockhausen completed a modest musique concrète student piece entitled ""Etude"". Cage's work resulted in his famous work ""Williams Mix"", which was made up of some six hundred tape fragments arranged according to the demands of the ""I Ching"". Cage's early radical phase reached its height that summer of 1952, when he unveiled the first art ""happening"" at Black Mountain College, and ""4'33"""", the so-called controversial ""silent piece"". The premiere of ""4'33"""" was performed by David Tudor. The audience saw him sit at the piano,"
"in music is John Cage's 1952 composition 4′33″, in which the entire performance consists of four and a half minutes of utter silence. The musicians are instructed not to play their instruments. All the audience can hear is the sound of themselves. In this famous and controversial piece, John Cage presents silence as the antithesis of music. Thus, the absence of all audible content becomes music's anti-genre. There are, however other examples. If music is the artistic arrangement of sound, then the non-artistic arrangement of sound might be a suitable candidate for musical-negation. Non-music becomes noise, rather than artful melody"