Test Yourself – Can You Tell The Difference Between Music And Noise

John Cage’s Unconventional Approach to Music

In 1960, American composer John Cage made a national television appearance to showcase his latest work. However, instead of using traditional instruments, Cage was surrounded by an array of household items. These included a bathtub, ice cubes, a toy fish, a pressure cooker, a rubber duck, and several radios. With these unconventional tools and a stopwatch, he performed “Water Walk,” triggering a series of sounds with a serious expression and incredible precision. The performance elicited a range of reactions, with some viewers finding it amusing and others deeming it absurd. However, most people likely shared the same question: is this even music?

The Perception of Music

What we classify as music often depends on our expectations. For instance, the rhythmic honking of horns in a jazz club is generally accepted as music. However, the same sounds on a highway would likely be dismissed as noise. This is because car horns are not considered instruments, and drivers are not seen as musicians. Our expectations influence how we categorize everything we hear. We typically perceive something as more musical if it uses a recognizable structure or popular sounds arranged in well-known patterns. Even within the realm of music, we expect certain genres to use specific instruments and harmonies. These expectations are based on existing musical traditions, which vary across different cultures and time periods.

John Cage’s Musical Innovations

In the early 20th century, many artists were pushing the boundaries of their fields, and John Cage was no exception. He sought to discover new kinds of music beyond traditional constraints. Cage pioneered new instruments that blurred the lines between art and everyday life, and he used surprising objects to reinvent existing instruments. He also explored new ways for music to mingle with other art forms. Along with his creative and romantic partner, Merce Cunningham, Cage held recitals where his music and Cunningham’s choreography were created independently before being performed together.

Challenging the Boundaries of Music

Cage dared listeners to question the boundaries between music and noise, as well as sound and silence. One of his most famous compositions is a solo piano piece consisting of nothing but musical rests for four minutes and 33 seconds. This piece wasn’t intended as a prank, but rather as a question. Could the opening and closing of a piano lid be music? What about the click of a stopwatch or the rustling of a crowd? Like the white canvases of his painting peers, Cage asked the audience to question their expectations about what music was. His work often prioritized spontaneous, ephemeral experiences over precise, predictable performances.

Embracing Chance in Composition

Cage developed processes that left some compositional decisions up to chance. He used the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text, to generate different musical durations, tempos, and dynamics. He even used early computers to help produce these random parameters. For some pieces, Cage offered musicians incomplete compositions notated with broad instructions, allowing them to compose on the fly with the help of his guidelines.

Breaking Musical Expectations

Some composers rejected Cage’s seemingly careless approach, believing it was the composer’s job to organize sound and time for a specific, intentional purpose. After all, if these strange compositions were music, then where do we draw the line? But Cage, like a bold explorer, didn’t want to be bound by restrictions or follow old rules. He dedicated himself to shattering our expectations, creating a series of once-in-a-lifetime experiences that continue encouraging musicians and audiences to embrace the unexpected.