What is the most boring
Margaret Mikulska
>In article <1994Feb11....@princeton.edu>,
>Margaret Mikulska <miku...@astro.princeton.edu> wrote:
>>In article <2je94l$a...@scunix2.harvard.edu> rw...@husc7.harvard.edu (Richard Wang) writes:
>>>In article <1994Feb10.0...@princeton.edu>,
>>>Margaret Mikulska <miku...@astro.princeton.edu> wrote:
>>>>In article <ac.5915.53...@delta.com> leon...@delta.com (Leon Vick) writes:
>>>>>:What do you all think is the most boring piece of music ever written?
>>>>>
>>>>> 4'33"
>>>>
>>>>This one is boring only if *you* make it boring. When it comes to any
>>>>other work, one _might_ blame the composer. Here, the listener has
>>>>nobody to blame but him/herself if s/he is bored.
>>>
>>>Of course, the composer has no duty whatsoever to entertain the audience,
>>>right?
>>
>>Right. The composer has no *duty* to entertain the audience. I don't
>>think artists have any *duties* (unless they sign an agreement for a
>>specific commission, performance, etc.).
>
>Like Bach, I suppose. The composer is making money from the audience; he
>can't ethically give them a cheap publicity stunt and pass it off as a
>musical performance. Or maybe we could extrapolate caveat emptor *ad
>absurdum* and say that they deserved what they got for being suckered
>like that?
First, if by "a cheap publicity stunt" you mean 4'33", then although it
may be a publicity stunt for you, other people see it differently. If
you meant something else, please tell me what you meant. Not everybody
feels "being suckered" during 4'33".
As for my parenthetical remark about agreements/commissions - if a
composer agrees to write, say, a string quartet, s/he indeed has a duty
to deliver a score for the said qrt., according to the original
agreement. What the composer can *NOT* do, and therefore it is not even
possible to talk about his "duties" in this regard, is to guarantee that
everybody will regard his/her work as "musical performance" as opposed to
"contemporary crap". What is _music_ is highly subjective, and it is
absurd to blame the composer for the complaints from those who don't
like what s/he delivered. The composer writes what s/he wants, and the
audience buys some and reject other. More accurately, some people buy
some, some other reject some (or, sometimes, everything). It wasn't all
that different with Bach, Beethoven, or many others - many works we now
admire were originally regarded as nothing but cacophony and a travesty
of art. There were people who thought that this or that of LvB's works
was "passed off as music". Some of Bach's contemporaries complained
that he was just rambling on the organ instead of providing decent
music. So what else is new?
Also, as Roger pointed out, the attendance is not mandatory.
>You can't blame the fact that 4'33" is unentertaining on the audience.
>They have a right to expect some effort from the composer.
The statement "<insert your favorite hate-piece> is unentertaining"
is meaningless. You need to specify _for_whom_ it is boring. If you
mean that it is boring for everybody, then your statement is false -
counter-examples exist. If you mean "for some people", then it's
trivially true: for every piece of music there are some people who are
bored to tears by it. So what? Different people have different tastes,
the same people are in the mood for something else under different
circumstances.
"Unentertaining, boring" is a state of mind, not an inherent property of
music.
As for "some effort" - read Cage, his writings are quite interesting, and
show that 4'33" is a result of some thinking. You may disagree with his
approach, but in my opinion, his writings show that he was not a fake.
Besides, buckets of sweat are neither necessary nor sufficient condition
to produce a work of art. What counts is the result; are you saying
that the more difficult it was for somebody to create a work, the better
the work is? I doubt it.
Finally, you assume that musical events have to be _entertaining_. Roger
elaborated on this so well that I have little to add to that.
>Say, would you like to buy my latest piece of abstract art? Sure, I know
>it looks like a crushed Coke can, but I assure you it's much more... Look
>at how ARTISTICALLY it's been crushed!
No, you miss the point. From my point of view, 4'33" was an event that
pointed out new ways of approaching music, and, to put it a bit
pretentiously, "expanded our aural horizons". In other words, it
reminded us that a lot of sound that we didn't call music could be
regarded as such, if we made up our mind (pun intended) to treat them as
music. Once we know that, we don't _necessarily_ need another performance
of 4'33": the main idea has already been conveyed. In visual arts,
after, say, Duchamps and Warhol and others, an analogous idea has
already been conveyed. So I would say you are a bit too late, but
thanks for trying.
Then again, I may like the shape of or the play of shadows or whatever else
on your coke can.
-Margaret