Roman Turovsky at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Was the piece that requires no playing? I forget the title, something like > "4.32". Just sit for 4 and a half minutes and take your bows.
Close. It was 4'33" (as in four minutes, 33 seconds) and involves slightly (but not much) more than just sitting. The first performance (this is an account, mind you, written by someone who thought the piece worth writing about) in 1952 went like this: "Tudor placed the hand-written score, which was in conventional notation with blank measures, on the piano and sat motionless as he used a stopwatch to measure the time of each movement. The score indicated three silent movements, each of a different length, but when added together totalled four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Tudor signaled its commencement by lowering the keyboard lid of the piano. The sound of the wind in the trees entered the first movement. After thirty seconds of no action, he raised the lid to signal the end of the first movement. It was then lowered for the second movement, during which raindrops pattered on the roof. The score was in several pages, so he turned the pages as time passed, yet playing nothing at all. The keyboard lid was raised and lowered again for the final movement, during which the audience whispered and muttered." You can read all about it at www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm. Stravinsky remarked that he hoped we could have similar works of major length from Cage. HP
