The Blogspot dictionary defines music as: "The art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion."
This week I challenged my 7th grade music appreciation class to create definitions for "music." Most of them have only been exposed to highly commercial tunes, so it's painfully easy to challenge their notions of what qualifies something as music. Even the wrinkle that a song might be good though it's not in their personal taste is a bit of a revelation.
One of the pieces I played for students (and you can view my entire playlist at the end of this entry), is the song "4:33" by John Cage. My own experience with the song, as a freshman taking a history of the blues class, was not dissimilar to what I experience in my classroom when I play the song. See what you think (if you haven't viewed it before) before reading on. This is just one example I pulled from youtube; it's been performed by many.
My peers simultaneously experienced disbelief and annoyance. Was this a joke? It had to be! I was confused too, but I wanted to figure out what was happening, and I thank my high school English teachers for making me reach so hard for subtext. I heard instrumentalists practicing down the hall, a saxophonist repeating the same bits of a song over and over until they got it right, birds singing outside the windows of the classroom, the buzz of the tv monitor, my classmates angry whispers.
"They missed the point. There’s no
such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they
didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear
the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second,
raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people
themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked
out."
— John Cage speaking about the premiere of 4′33″.
This is a song that invites the listener to pay attention to the life, the music that is around them. Every time this song is played it is different, unique to each listener. This song has more lives than the Gallifreyan Doctor, and it perplexes and compels, knows something the listener doesn't know.
It would be all too easy to scoff at this "4:33", to ignore the questions it's asking about the very nature of music. Like Cage, I subscribe to the notion that music has always existed-- will continue to exist-- that the rustling of the leaves was the first applause, the rhythm of the heartbeat the first 4/4 time signature. When I play "4:33", I delight in stopping and hearing what I usually miss. And, to be truthful, every time I share this with a new group of students I delight in watching them struggle to comprehend what is happening.
Below is the music of my mini listening lesson. While the purpose is to help students clarify a personal definition of music, it is quite self-indulgent. Because I spend a great deal of time listening to music students love, I use this rare opportunity to play music I love. The first one's a doozy -- and one of my favorite songs of all time!
1. "Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City" - Yoko Ono
2. "Search and Destroy" - The Stooges
3. 4'33" - John Cage
4. "Judy is a Punk" - The Ramones
5. "Weeping Wall" - David Bowie
6. "Hong Kong Garden" - Siouxsie and the Banshees
