MU 121-GP Introduction to Music Fall Term 2020

I think this is more say an auditory reset because it allows you to really focus at first due to the lonesome silence. You become so anxious waiting for a sound or song to come of this piece however you then begin to realize that nothing is being heard. I would think of this as a great warm up to an audience allowing them to appreiceiate the actual melodies, harmonies, and tones when they come to be present. 

Today in class we briefly mentioned John Cage's famous composition titled 4'33" - a work for solo piano that is "in three movements" but contains nothing but silence.

While there's a lot of humor (and chutzpah) in this composition, it's also thought-provoking. It gets to the question of the ontology (or "being") of music...the old question "What is music?"

Cage was a devotee of Zen meditation and ideas, and his contention was that 4'33" was not "silence" at all, even though there were no composed notes or sounds of any kind. So, where was the "music?"