knuxie wrote:Which begs the question: Is music defined from the perspective of the creator or hearer? Cage and some of his contemporaries defined music as any sound produced, i.e. wind rustling through trees, din of street traffic, or just white noise (or what you hear with earplugs in). It was this approach which led him to 'write' pieces, like 4'33" in order to not make a mockery of music, but to give it a different perspective and, perhaps, point of origin.
Well, anyone can define anything to be anything. But definitions exist to identify common practice, not to dictate it. The vast majority of people would define traffic sounds as noise, even if they were "like music to their ears". Even that phrase acknowledges that such sound is not normally thought to be music.
Examples abound. The fellow who dubs in the sounds of wind in the trees or waves on the seashore is the "sound effects technician", not the "music editor", etc. This reveals what most people think the word "music" means.
Using a word with a definition that defies what most people bellieve it to mean is a little self-indulgent.
Now, discussions of taxonomy are different. In those cases, we are drying to establish a jargon for specific application. If Cage and his followers were trying to re-establish the jargon of organized sound, then fine. But they failed, in my view.
Again, they fell into the trap that the definition of music depended on the resulting beauty. Beauty is surely a subjective aspect of how the receiver does the receiving. Their argument was that even normal noise around us is musical, if we pay attention. That is a subjective matter of opinion, of course. Leaving beauty out of the definition (as Webster does) solves that problem. Thus, I'm perfectly happy to agree that some noise can be beautiful, just as some speech can be beautiful, even if it is not music.
I said that Cage's 4:33 made a statement about music, perhaps, but that it was not music. Your description of his purpose ("to give [music] a different perspective and, perhaps, a point of origin") fits with that characterization exactly. I didn't say nor intend that statement to imply he was mocking music. You added that. But mocking music is no different than giving it a different perspective or a point of origin--the only difference is the tool in use.
I also did not claim that it was not art. I define art as being any creative act intended and received as art, rather than as something other than art. Yes, that is circular, but it is also useful. If someone listens to 4:33 and comes to love it for its intrinsic value to them as art, then it is art. I do not know the answer to that, but I have to say that I suspect most people appreciated 4:33 (for those who appreciated it at all) because of the intellectual statement it made and not as art. But that line is blurry indeed.
Rick "who cannot abide much that is still clearly music" Denney
