Can You Identify Music From Noise? Put That to the Test.

Learn about the avant-garde composer John Cage, whose works pushed the limits of what counts as music and what counts as noise.

John Cage, a composer, appeared on television in 1960 to present his most recent composition. However, Cage performed "Water Walk" using household items like a bathtub, ice cubes, a toy fish, a rubber duck, and numerous radios in place of traditional instruments. Is this even music, wondered the vast majority of viewers. Hanako Sawada investigates the distinctions between sound and music.

Back to talking about John Cage, an American composer, who appeared on national television in 1960 sharing his most recent work. But instead of using conventional equipment, Cage instead used ordinary items like a bathtub, ice cubes, a toy fish, a pressure cooker, a rubber duck, and many radios. He did the "Water Walk" while using these resources and a timer, firing off a sequence of noises with a serious face and amazing accuracy.

While some viewers felt the performance was totally bizarre, others thought it was hilarious. But the common concern among viewers was probably, "Is this even music?" The solution to this query is more challenging than you may imagine. Our expectations have a big impact on what we consider to be music.

Think about being in a jazz club and hearing the horns honking in time. It's generally accepted that this is music. However, if you heard the same thing while driving, many people would likely dismiss it as noise. After all, automobile horns are not musical instruments, and these drivers are not performers.

These kinds of expectations affect how we categorize everything we hear. If anything has a recognizable structure or well-known sounds grouped in well-known patterns, we tend to assume that it sounds more musical. We also anticipate certain musical genres employing particular instruments and harmonies. These expectations are founded on musical traditions that already exist, yet those traditions aren't inflexible. They vary across many eras and cultural contexts.

John Cage wanted to find out what new genres of music might exist outside of those limitations in the early 20th century, when many musicians were pushing the limits of their respective areas. He started developing new instruments that blurred the boundaries between art and daily life and reimagined classic instruments using unexpected items.

He also looked at novel combinations of music and other art forms. He held performances with Merce Cunningham, his artistic and romantic companion, where Cage's music and Cunningham's choreography would be developed separately before being performed together.

Regardless of his strategy, Cage cheerfully encouraged listeners to consider where the lines between sound and quiet, as well as music and noise, should be drawn. The best example is probably one of Cage's most well-known creations, a solo piano piece that lasts for four minutes and 33 seconds and is made almost entirely of melodic rests.

This was meant to be an inquiry rather than a practical joke. Could the sound of a piano lid shutting and opening be music?

What about a stopwatch's click? The rustle and probably even grumbling of a group of people? Like his fellow painters' white canvases, Cage challenged the audience to reevaluate their notions of what music was. The music clearly evoked a powerful emotional response, even though it lacked the drama of certain traditional pieces. These impromptu, fleeting moments were usually given priority in Cage's works in favor of accurate, reliable performances.

Even certain compositional judgments were left to chance according to the procedures he created. The I Ching, a traditional Chinese book of fortune-telling, was one of his favorites. The I Ching enables users to create a pattern of lines that can be used to interpret queries and provide fortunes with just a few coins.

However, Cage transformed these patterns into a set of tables that produced various musical lengths, tempos, and dynamics. Later, he even turned to primitive computers to assist in creating these random parameters. For certain compositions, Cage went even further, giving musicians incomplete compositions notated with general instructions, letting them use his rules to compose on the spot.

Some composers disapproved of Cage's allegedly sloppy style. They held that the composer's role was to deliberately and specifically arrange sound and time. After all, where do we draw the line if these odd pieces qualify as music?

However, Cage didn't want to follow rules like a daring adventurer.

He didn't want to adhere to outdated rules, either. He committed himself to exceeding our expectations and produced a number of once-in-a-lifetime events that continue to inspire performers and spectators to welcome the unexpected.