{"id":1908,"date":"2018-09-24T05:33:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T10:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2023-09-23T13:19:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T18:19:34","slug":"the-silent-piece-rebooted-0-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/2018\/09\/24\/the-silent-piece-rebooted-0-00\/","title":{"rendered":"The silent piece, rebooted: 0′ 00″"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A sketch for 0\u2032 00\u2033 (New York Public Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em> may have been inspired by John Cage\u2019s realization of a kind of selfless compositional silence, but the material nature of the composition itself led people into distraction. Cage\u2019s very real and powerful experience in the anechoic chamber\u2014that there is no such thing as silence\u2014could not be simply presented on a concert program for others to experience as well. 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em> was, in many essential ways, a traditional musical composition: it had a title; it had a composer; it had fixed boundaries; it was measured out in time with a clear beginning, middle, and ending; it was presented on concert programs, with a performer on stage as the center of attention. But Cage\u2019s experience of silence was a profound inner turning from intention to emptiness, something that could not be packaged and put on stage for an audience\u2019s consumption.<\/p>\n

In order to effectively present his understanding of silence to audiences, Cage had to write a piece quite different from 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em>. In 1962, Cage wrote this new silent piece and called it 0\u2032 00\u2033 (4\u2032 33\u2033 No. 2)<\/em>. In Tokyo, he sat down at a table and copied out the one-sentence instruction that is the score:<\/p>\n

In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The writing of this sentence itself was amplified, so that Cage\u2019s action on this occasion was both the creation of the score and its first performance. The amplification was a dramatic way of making the nature of silence clear through technology: the \u201csilent\u201d act of writing out the score was in fact full of unintended sounds.<\/p>\n

As I describe at length in my book on Cage\u2019s music<\/a>, 0\u2032 00\u2033<\/em> is unlike anything that comes before it in his work. Unlike the original 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em>, it is not an object, a thing made of silence. It is not about measurement or sonic dimensions in any sense; it is not about systems activated by chance operations; it does not use methods or notations to open the mind to the full range of sonic possibilities. The piece does not directly acknowledge any objective world of sound at all. There is only the personal action of the performer and the transformational power of the amplification.<\/p>\n

This separation from the objective world of sound is revealed in the title of the piece: its zeroes indicate that there is no measurement of time at all. This is a radical departure for Cage. All of his music of the 1950s was based on the methods of selection and measurement\u2014at the very least the measurement of time lengths within which a piece would take place. One way to look at 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em> is that it consists solely of measurements of time, even the more radical text score that leaves the values of those measurements unspecified by the composer. 0\u2032 00\u2033<\/em> instead takes place in \u201czero time\u201d, an idea that Cage took from Christian Wolff\u2019s music. Wolff\u2019s notations often used numbers to indicate lengths of time within which events should happen, and he would use zero to indicate that the duration of an event was open, unnamed.<\/p>\n

By giving the piece the subtitle 4\u2032 33\u2033 No. 2<\/em>, Cage indicates that this is a new silent piece. I would argue that it is a celebration of silence in all the ways that were most meaningful to Cage and which had been missed in the concert performances of 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em>. It is the piece that is truly rooted in the knowledge that there is no such thing as silence, only unintended sound. Whereas the experience in the anechoic chamber had been the trigger for 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em>, the  fundamental character of that piece came from the nuts and bolts of Cage\u2019s chance methods of the time, his experience assembling musical scores from fragments of sounds and silences arranged into charts. 0\u2032 00\u2033<\/em>, the new silent piece, has the lesson of the anechoic chamber at its core. It is a clear and direct demonstration that there is no such thing as silence. 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em>, despite its apparent radical provocations, was fundamentally just another musical score. It was the result of an act of creation that broke tradition only in its mechanics of chance and its unusual choice of materials. 0\u2032 00\u2033<\/em> is nothing but a turning towards the universe of unintended sounds that shadows our every action. As Cage explained it in an interview in 1965: \u201cWhat the piece tries to say is that everything we do is music, or can become music through the use of microphones.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the problems with 4\u2032 33\u2033<\/em> was that, although at its spiritual heart was an ideal of compositional silence, its form as a defined composition performed on a concert program did nothing but draw increased attention to the composer and his intentions. 0\u2032 00\u2033<\/em> avoids this problem by shifting the focus more fully to the specific act of the performer. The piece is all action and no architecture or form. And while the piece is purely subjective, Cage meant for it also to be completely selfless. To this end, the day after its first performance he added four more instructions to the score:<\/p>\n

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