The Beginning of Happiness

Even this model could be refined in specific cases. The creative process for
composers is often as esthesic as poietic; recorded electronic music and com-
poser performances may either combine composer/performer roles or bypass
them (Warfield 1974, 18). However, the “chain” model applies to most graphic
and text notation, and it gives the performer parity in the chain of making and
taking in.
Indeterminate music not only heightens the performer link in the idea trans-
mission chain, it also highlights the division of labour between performer and
composer. One can limit, even misrepresent, an indeterminate piece by con-
fusing what a composer has written with what a performer adds in interpre-
tation. For instance, Cage’s 4’33” (1952), the famous so-called “silent” piece,
is written in common-practice notation in two of its versions. The original
“Woodstock” (1952) has blank staves in 4/4 time; the Peters publication (1960)
has three movements labelled “Tacet.” (The “Kremen” (1953) version has pro-
portional (blank) symbolic notation.)7
As we know what 4’33” does—the performer remains silent—it should be
easy to describe, but descriptions actually vary. Nattiez describes 4’33” as “a
silent work in which the pianist places his fingers on the keys and removes
them again, repeatedly, without ever sounding a note” (1990, 43). This descrip-
tion seems to be based on attendance at one performance; it certainly shows no
acquaintance with the score. Nicholas Cook writes, “the pianist sits at a closed
piano; opens the lid to begin the performance; and closes it some four and a
half minutes later” (1990, 11). This statement is either deliberately vague or else
it describes a single, variant performance of one, four-and-a-half-minute move-
ment, delineated by the opening and the closing of the lid. If Cook is purpose-
fully vague, he has chosen an odd analytical approach. As Christopher Hobbs
wrote, “You might just as well say that Beethoven 9 begins when the conductor
raises his baton and ends when he puts it down.”8 The description of the single
movement and its initiation and conclusion is also odd: first, because Cook fol-
lows this description by quoting Cage’s anecdote about performing the three
movements of 4’33” during a woodland mushroom hunt (Cage 1961, 276; Cook
1990, 11); second, because in his premiere, and now traditional, interpretation,
David Tudor began each movement by closing the fall board (keyboard cover),
not the lid, and opening it at its end. Finally, Lydia Goehr claims that Cage has
not escaped what she calls the “post-1800 ‘work-concept’,” because, “in ironic
gesture [sic], it is Cage who specifies that a pianist should sit at a piano to go
through the motions of performance. The performer is applauded and the
composer granted recognition for the ‘work’” (Goehr 1992, 264).
All three writers either have not read the score or do not distinguish com-
positional actions, mandated in the score, from interpretative ones. Goehr
charges Cage with perpetuating the “work-concept” by directing a pianist to

7 Gann provides a brief overview and comparison of these versions in Chapter 5, “The Piece and Its
Notations” (Gann 2010, 167–187). All 4’33” versions, including variant editions of the “Kremen” and
“Peters” versions are now available in a synoptic centennial edition (see bibliography).
8 Hobbs, email to author, 16 December 2008.

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