Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
| I'm incredibly mortified. I apologise for my ignorance. Are all three | movements the same length? Do they add up to 4'33 or is that the length of | each? In case anyone is interested, there's an excellent history of this piece at http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm I wasn't aware that there have been three editions of this "work". Cage's original score was in standard musical (staff) notation, and consisted of several pages with clefs and barlines, but no notes. He produced a second edition that was in the form of a "time line", an approach that he used for other works. Instead of bar lines, the score was marked in seconds. A third (Peters) edition was only one page, and just gave the timings of the movements - but got two of them wrong! Cage's original composition was in three movements, of lenths 30", 2'23" and 1'40". He said that it could be performed by any instrumentalist or group of instrumentalists, though most performances have been by pianists. Some years later, Cage also wrote another piece called 0'00". His instructions were that it was "to be performed in any way by anyone". To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
I'm incredibly mortified. I apologise for my ignorance. Are all three movements the same length? Do they add up to 4'33 or is that the length of each? This is a real challenge for a player program. I presume that an authentic computer performance must come up with some sort of opening noise and make various beeps and burps as it opens various windows before each movement and then more animated noises as it closes things down at the end. Laurie - Original Message - From: "Jack Campin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, July 05, 2002 2:01 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence >X:814 >T:4'11" >C:John Cage >O:USA >%http://www.musicaviva.com/abc/tunes/cage-john/4-11.abc >%Posted Aug 9th 1999 at abcusers by Laurie Griffiths in an attempt to >%introduce some serious music to the list. Proofread by Phil Taylor >M:none >Q:1/8=60 >K:Abm >z251|] Wrong, all wrong. Not only is it 4' 33", but a practical performance would be a bit longer; there are three movements, with the usual inter-movement things (tuning up, etc) between them. You have to use the P: construct or present it as three separate tunes. I've only seen it performed once, by the Whistlebinkies during Cage's visit to Glasgow in 1991. They did all the usual hoisting fiddle onto shoulders, tucking bagpipes in position and getting set with the bodhran stuff. If I remember right, they used a different placement of the players round the hall for each movement. It's about the right length to enter in a fiddle competition as a march, strathspey and reel set. === <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
RE: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
I totally concur with you, Laurie. After all, this is clearly one of the most important test cases for abc player implementations, and a most embarrassing one to let slip through... (Skink fails, by the way. I'm red-faced.) wil -Original Message- From: Laurie (ukonline) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 7/3/2002 7:28 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence My recollection was that someone else started it but gave a transcription which did have silence, but did not have exactly the right length of silence. Whether it is 4'11" or 4'13" is clearly incredibly (sic) important and I do hope I didn't get the wrong one. Laurie - Original Message - From: "Frank Nordberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 4:04 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence Thomas Bending wrote: > > The Musica Viva version is presumably just a quote from the > complete work... Don't blame me, I'm just the archivist. It was Laurie who posted the tune at abcusers - and Phil who did the proofreading. Here's the tune in question, btw: X:814 T:4'11" C:John Cage O:USA %http://www.musicaviva.com/abc/tunes/cage-john/4-11.abc %Posted Aug 9th 1999 at abcusers by Laurie Griffiths in an attempt to %introduce some serious music to the list. Proofread by Phil Taylor M:none Q:1/8=60 K:Abm z251|] Cheers Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
My recollection was that someone else started it but gave a transcription which did have silence, but did not have exactly the right length of silence. Whether it is 4'11" or 4'13" is clearly incredibly (sic) important and I do hope I didn't get the wrong one. Laurie - Original Message - From: "Frank Nordberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 4:04 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence Thomas Bending wrote: > > The Musica Viva version is presumably just a quote from the > complete work... Don't blame me, I'm just the archivist. It was Laurie who posted the tune at abcusers - and Phil who did the proofreading. Here's the tune in question, btw: X:814 T:4'11" C:John Cage O:USA %http://www.musicaviva.com/abc/tunes/cage-john/4-11.abc %Posted Aug 9th 1999 at abcusers by Laurie Griffiths in an attempt to %introduce some serious music to the list. Proofread by Phil Taylor M:none Q:1/8=60 K:Abm z251|] Cheers Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
Thomas Bending wrote: > > The Musica Viva version is presumably just a quote from the > complete work... Don't blame me, I'm just the archivist. It was Laurie who posted the tune at abcusers - and Phil who did the proofreading. Here's the tune in question, btw: X:814 T:4'11" C:John Cage O:USA %http://www.musicaviva.com/abc/tunes/cage-john/4-11.abc %Posted Aug 9th 1999 at abcusers by Laurie Griffiths in an attempt to %introduce some serious music to the list. Proofread by Phil Taylor M:none Q:1/8=60 K:Abm z251|] Cheers Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
Frank Nordberg writes:
| John Chambers wrote:
| > Hey, folks, here's a wonderful new addition to the ongoing
| > issue of copyrights and the recording industry:
| >
| > http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=307449
| >
| > (Maybe we need an abc transcription of Mike Batt's "One
| > Minute's Silence" to go with the version of Cage's 4'33"
| > that's already online.)
|
| It's 4'11", John, not 4'33" ;-)
Hmmm ... I seem to see both of them in widespread use. Maybe there
are differences in performance practices?
| Anyways, if Cage's publishers actually are suing people for this, maybe
| I should remove the tune from Musica Viva...
It seems that the letter that Batt received didn't actually threaten
prosecution. It's highly likely this was all done in the "John Cage
spirit". I'd bet that they're all having a good laugh at the news
coverage. Most of the discussion I've seen of it has also been in the
spirit of the original "work".
Thus, one comment observed that the Cage estate has good ground for
complaint. By reducing Cage's work to a mere 60 seconds, Batt has
either radically abridged it, or is performing it more than four
times faster than was intended. Either is a radical modification,
without permission, of the "original" composition.
Others have pointed out that there is a long history of composers
taking some thematic material and writing "Variations on a them by
..." works. This is considered an honor, not theft. It's clear that
Batt was really honoring Cage's memory by taking the thematic
material and writing his own composition based on it. And if you
listen to recordings of both works as the composers intended, you'll
clearly hear that they are very different.
Another suggestion was that the "blank media" royalties for blank CDs
and tapes should all go to the John Cage estate, because they are
clearly unauthorized recordings of his famous work.
Yet another remarked that Cage's work was one of the catchier songs
of all time. "It keeps getting stuck in my head ..."
I've wondered if we should ask permission for an abc transcription of
Cage's work. There's a certain surrealistic fun to the thought.
I did post a reply to the topic at slashdot.org, describing a program
that I found back in the 80's, when AT&T owned the rights to the
"unix" trademark. It was the /bin/true program, which merely exits
with a successful status. This seems silly, but it's useful in
various scripting languages when the syntax requires the name of a
program but you don't actually need anything done at that point. The
traditional version of this was an empty file, which has the correct
behavior. In the Sys/V version, it wasn't empty. It consisted of a
blank line - and an AT&T copyright notice.
Now, it's obvious how this happened. But I had a bit of fun starting
some discussions by posting this program ("in its entirety") to a
number of newsgroups and mailing lists. I openly admitted that I was
intentionally violating AT&T's copyright claim, and invited AT&T's
lawyers to prosecute me. We had fun discussing whether we should be
stripping all the blank lines out of all programs, so as not to be
subject to an AT&T lawsuit. And did the copyright apply only to blank
lines in shell scripts? To all scripts? To all programming languages?
To all documents? To all printed books?
We never got an explanation from AT&T's lawyers on any of these vital
legal points. We tried really hard to get AT&T to sue us, but they
just ignored us. So the legal questions are still open.
Maybe John Cage's estate could actually instigate a lawsuit, so as to
get the courts to make a clear decision about such idiocies. I'd bet
that Cage would have approved of this.
This isn't entirely fun and games. There's a lawsuit in the works now
over the package called "Lindows". Microsoft has sued them, claiming
that it's too close to "Windows", and Microsoft owns the rights to
that word. If they win, they'll probably next sue everyone who is
using the words "Personal" and "Computer" in any product name.
OTOH, the folks who make BeOS say they're suing Microsoft, because
the Windows "Me" edition differs from "Be" by only one letter, and is
thus a clear trademark infringement.
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Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
> > (Maybe we need an abc transcription of Mike Batt's "One > > Minute's Silence" to go with the version of Cage's 4'33" > > that's already online.) > > It's 4'11", John, not 4'33" ;-) Cage's original piece was 4'33": see the New Grove's dictionary at http://www.grovemusic.com/index.html for example. I believe it was written to occupy 273 seconds because absolute zero is about -273 degrees Celsius: Cage apparently thought this significant. The Musica Viva version is presumably just a quote from the complete work: yet another example of dumbing-down the classics for the short attention spans of today's audiences, I suppose 8-) Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
John Chambers wrote: > > Hey, folks, here's a wonderful new addition to the ongoing > issue of copyrights and the recording industry: > > http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=307449 > > (Maybe we need an abc transcription of Mike Batt's "One > Minute's Silence" to go with the version of Cage's 4'33" > that's already online.) It's 4'11", John, not 4'33" ;-) Anyways, if Cage's publishers actually are suing people for this, maybe I should remove the tune from Musica Viva... Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
