Listening

 GREAT ARTISTS, great poets, composers, geniuses of all types, shapes, and sizes tend to be groundbreakers, innovators, avant gard in French. John Cage was such a person an American composer known for his experimenting style, whose originality perhaps took him a bit too far, outside the box, and even over the edge.  In 1952 he introduced a new composition titled "Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds" to a stunned audience. The composition is a sonata, a piano piece ostensibly, but nobody knows for sure because the work contains no music, no notes, neither melody nor harmony - only silence. Anybody in theory, even someone completely unfamiliar with or untrained in music can perform the piece like a virtuoso. To do so requires merely siting at a piano, and looking at the keys for a little over four and a half minutes. The pianist, presumably attired in a tuxedo or gown if female, strides onstage, sits on the bench, and does noting other than open and close the keyboard covering twice at precise moments, to signify a new movement. At first audiences were stunned, then annoyed, as they sat shuffling their feet, glancing around the auditorium, inserting fingers in ear seemingly searching for ear wax, and eventually demanding a refund on their ticket. Nowadays the work is rarely if ever performed or recorded due to lack of popularity. Sometimes innovation goes unrewarded. The composer's purpose, so he said, was to awaken classical music fans to the reality that they live in a world in which in which, no matter where they are, or what they are doing, they are surrounded by a veritable symphony of beautiful sound, if only they will listen. One might argue that most intelligent people already know that, and don't need to get a lesson in the form of silent music, but that's beside the point. One might also ask, in a crowded concert hall, precisely what beautiful noise one might hope to hear other than actual music. Random coughing, shuffling of feet and rustling of clothing and squeaking of chair backs? One might further inquire whether it is necessary to bother with an alleged musical composition to realize that the world is full of beautiful noise, always abundant, near. Again, perhaps, beside the point. the point is that to every ear in every life there is the opportunity for ambient audio, and presumably every other form of beauty, if only we advantage ourselves of it.  But why ask questions at all? Why not just sit back, and enjoy the concert?