An Opinion of John Cage's 4'33" - Does Music Exist in Silence?

In 1952, John Cage composed a piece of music entitled 4'33". When performed, this piece of music consists of a pianist walking to a piano and not hitting one key for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, thereby producing "silence" for that period of time. The pianist then leaves the stage, and the performance is over. This begs the question: should 4'33" be called music?

Yes. There is a conscious attempt on the part of the artist to create it. Had I attended the 1952 performance with no prior knowledge of the artist's intent, I would probably have reacted in the same way. Trying to distinguish the reason for this was pretty difficult. The core of art is intent, and it is not only the artist, but also the audience who ultimately and collectively determine the status of any work of art.

John Cage stated that natural silence does not exist, and he relates back to an Indian philosophy that "music is continuous; it only stops when we turn away and stop listening." This is a pretty strong notion, and leads me to begin discussing the power of individual opinion and interpretation.

One person could listen to the crickets and an owl at night and hear beautiful music, but another could just hear annoying sounds. Even though the crickets are intentionally creating music, the interpretation of the noise could consider it so. In the same respect, one member of an audience at a ballet might be completely taken by the performance, and another might deem it unworthy of being called art. It is possible for someone to be melting glass and all of a sudden find that the shape they made
Everything revolves around expectation, so the extent to which one regards that in their judging of artwork is extremely relevant. With knowledge of any piece comes an automatic belief of what will come from that piece. Using the 4'33" example, the audience members had no idea what the plan for the performance was, and hoping to hear music being played on the piano, they were ultimately let down, as I would assume many people today would as well. Unless those people today knew the artist's intent.

The same thing can be related to film genres as well as other performance arts. As mentioned in the critical concept, action movies differ greatly from dramatic films, and most audience members know what they are looking for; they know what to expect. Generally people don't get angry when there is a lack of drama in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or little immediate story in an opera.

As most art is created for an audience, both the artist and the viewers have the ability to discern a piece as being art or not. It doesn't take the entire world to agree that something is in fact a work of art. As long as it was created to be art or the artist considers it art or just one person thinks it is art whether there was an "artist" or not, then it is art.