Quote:
Originally Posted by DOFTS
I don't think in terms of opposites. I believe that one cannot exist without the other. Silence and Sound are needed to acknowledge the existence of each other. In the end though, there exist no true silence. There are sounds around us and becoming aware of the sounds is important.
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You are arriving at the point.
You are saying that the complement (or opposite) of silence is
sound, which makes perfect sense.
But if one embraces 4'33" as music, he must be willing to accept the simple corollary that is the complement of silence is
music. The apparent reluctance to accept this consequence suggests intellectual dishonesty.
As a philosophical statement, I fail to see any profoundness in the thesis of this piece. In everyday life, the existence of background noise is acknowledged in something as mundane as signal-to-noise ratio, measured in decibels (standard for portable devices e.g. iPods is 90 db). Please enlighten me on how this piece has influenced music thereafter. For all I know,
at face value, Simen's piece which he claimed to have been inspired by this piece was immediately dismissed as off-topic.
If I may be so bold as to propose more interesting questions surrounding the nature of music:
1. Which is paramount in music, the design or the execution?
2. Is music fleeting or eternal?
3. Is it possible to determine the intrisic value of music without extrinsic factors?