Recently I have become obsessed with John Cage’s composition 4’33”. I sit at the piano, with the lid closed, my daughter’s cello and bass guitar propped up beside me. Then, checking the timing on my phone, I start the piece. And listen. The sounds of silence. A beating heart within me. My breath being drawn in and whispered out. Outside, beyond the window, a world of clamouring silence.

John Cage

My obsession started when I realised the piece wasn’t just a joke. It was not some kind of avant-garde confidence trick: the composer’s new clothes. Most of all it was not about the performer, but it was all about the performance. The performer’s role is to start the piece and bring it to a close at the end of the allotted time.

But it is the world, the world of sound, that creates the performance. Always silent. Never silent. Always the same. Never the same. I find performing the piece to be both moving and unsettling, and strangely cathartic.

So at 5.33am this morning, drained but unable to sleep, I sat in my garden with my phone at the ready. I pressed record and silently asked the world to perform for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. This is my recording of the piece:

Turn the volume right up. What do you hear? Chirruping birds, cooing woodpigeons, blackbirds searching for worms. A furtive sip of tea. The flapping wings of a pigeon flying low overhead, and then a plane heading into Manchester airport. The distant hum of traffic. A world that is never silent. Even at this lonely hour.

Credits

4’33’ – John Cage (1952)

Picture – Erich Auerbach