Nothing to see here

Currently in urban Australia, we live in a world of constant access to digital content. Content rarely involved much silence. Yet silence is as important in music as sound, (and music is a huge part of digital content).

Silence is as important in music as sound is a phrase I find myself repeating to students in various settings. After learning about the Creative Music Movement, plus Experimental and Indeterminate Music, I was lead towards John Cage's highly influential works on silence. His 1952 piece 4’33”is where the player does not play for three movements and the audience listens to 'nothing'. Although is it nothing? Or rather, is it the opportunity to listen to the ambient sounds, the indeterminate and constant music being made in the world all around us.

Here is a performance of Cage's Lecture on Nothing by Robert Wilson.

This made more sense to me after reading a few reviews, including one from American Music critic Mark Swed, who said his big takeaway from John Cage's lecture on Nothing was “by reducing everything to nothing you begin to understand that art is the experience of the moment, that all that matters is now. You can never possess art.”(Swed, 2013)

The same could be argued for music, but one of my aims as a teacher is for each of my students to know that music of any form is for them. To listen to, to make, to analyse and enjoy!

MINIGAME - make some music with https://femurdesign.com/theremin/

(like Alexandra Stepanoff playing the theremin on NBC Radio)

References

• Castellano, G. (2022) The Origins and Future of Experimental Music. Sound of Life. https://www.soundoflife.com/blogs/experiences/experimental-music-origins-and-future

• Cage, J. (1999) Silence: Lectures and Writings. Marion Boyars

• Swed, M. (2013). Review: Robert Wilson finds the poetry in “Lecture on Nothing.” Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-john-cage-lecture-nothing-review-20131017-story.html

• Thomas, P. (2013). Understanding Indeterminate Music through Performance: Cage’s Solo for Piano. Twentieth-Century Music, 10(1), 91–113. doi:10.1017/S1478572212000424