Compositions with purely (or largely) indefinite pitch

[Keep Going]

So you cut a sentence and then claim that it doesn't make sense.

I inserted an elipsis because I don't like quoting large text.

Actually, it you who has misunderstood my point.  It is not important whether Cage's 4'33" was the first ever "silent" work conceived.  What is important is that Cage staged the work and an audience experienced ambient sound masquerading as silence. 

You didn't really explain what was new about the work in your last post. Then you say it is my misunderstanding. Strange.

Now you say 'it is not important whether Cage's 4'33" was the first ever "silent" work conceived', yet earlier you were making hyperbolic, grandiose statements about revolution.

So now the great innovation of Cage is that he merely staged* a silent piece?

* curious usage of this term, but lets not make this any more convoluted.

You might want to look up the definition of the word myopic.

I resented the fact that you called my view myopic, simply because you don't agree with it. You misunderstood that point, and now you think I don't know what myopic means.

[North Star]

No, I inserted an elipsis because I don't like quoting large text.

Well, yes. So you did - but only when you edited the quotation after my post.

[ahinton]

Those among us such as James and Keep Going who deny the importance of 4'33" are simply living in denial of the actual historical facts surrounding the work and its impact.

I'm not convinced of that, principally because in order properly to assess those historical facts and the extent and nature of the impact of the work one would first have to be sure what those facts are and have detailed information about that impact at the time and place and what impact the piece has had since; in view of this and what's been written here so far on the subject, I think that it is at least as possible for people to overestimate the piece, those facts and that impact as it is for others to "live in denial" of suchever importance as might reasonably be ascribable to it.

You quote from Wiki as follows:

"Silence played a major role in several of Cage's works composed before 4'33". The Duet for Two Flutes (1934), composed when Cage was 22, opens with silence, and silence was an important structural element in some of the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48), Music of Changes (1951) and Two Pastorales (1951). The Concerto for prepared piano and orchestra (1951) closes with an extended silence, and Waiting (1952), a piano piece composed just a few months before 4′33″, consists of long silences framing a single, short ostinato pattern. Furthermore, in his songs The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942) and A Flower (1950) Cage directs the pianist to play a closed instrument, which may be understood as a metaphor of silence.

At the time, however, Cage felt that such a piece would be "incomprehensible in the Western context," and was reluctant to write it down: "I didn't wish it to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it." Painter Alfred Leslie recalls Cage presenting a "one-minute-of-silence talk" in front of a window during the late 1940s, while visiting Studio 35 at New York University."

...and so on...

What this ignores (for what such omission might or might not be thought to be worth) is that Cage was by no means the first composer to recognise and understand that silence is one of the elements of music just as are melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm &c. - Beethoven surely appreciated this as much as anyone - the differences here being that Cage (a) appears to have sought to elevate silence to a position of equal importance to any of these as a constituent part of musical expression and (b) wanted to draw attention to the incidental sounds that the listener would notice during such a "silence", the problem with the latter being that, the concept and principle notwithstanding, what the listeners hears is not actually silence at all but sounds that would otherwise be extraneous to a musical performance which he/she would not usually expect or want to hear and would not usually be able to hear in any case - and those those extraneous sounds are not part of the piece as composed. What, for example, might Cage have felt had 4'33" been performed in deliberate near silence with almost no such extraneous sounds being audible; might he have felt that this undermined the purpose of the exercise?

You then write that
"The premiere of the three-movement 4′33″ was given by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, in Woodstock, New York, as part of a recital of contemporary piano music. The audience saw him sit at the piano and, to mark the beginning of the piece, close the keyboard lid. Some time later he opened it briefly, to mark the end of the first movement. This process was repeated for the second and third movements."
But these lid openings and closures were not written in the score, so what should someone in the middle of our present century do about them if desiring to present a HIPP of it in terms of authentic performance conventions? Are they supposed to contribute to every performance or were they intended only for inclusion in the première? I'm not asking you these questions specifically - merely pointing out that they're there to be asked.

You opine that "the piece remains controversial to this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music", but I don't accept that it is or does; it's just a one-off that some might see as s mere stunt but which has so little to arrest the attention of the conscientious listener that far too much importance has been attached to it purely because of that very fact. Much has been made over the years of Cage having challenged people's preconceptions of what music is or what it is for and their pre-ordained expectations of musical performance, but I fail to see how 4'33" does anything of the kind; it merely offers a passing exception to usual expectations. Cage also said that he had never heard a sound that he had not enjoyed; this is presumably intended to come across as another controversial statement but instead carries with it a whiff of wilful indiscriminacy that sits uneasily with anyone whose profession is composition. He also once said that Varèse doesn't consider sounds as sounds - he considers them as Varèse - which is surely what Varèse might be expected to do both by those who appreciate his music and by those who don't.

You note that
"In defining noise music and its value, Paul Hegarty in Noise/Music: A History (2007) contends that Cage's 4'33" represents the beginning of noise music proper" and that, "for Hegarty, noise music, as with 4'33", is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music."
This, too, appears to make rather less sense than Hegarty might have us believe, since the very point of 4'33" is that the only sounds are those "incidental" ones and that there is no such "desirable" sound as Hegarty describes it, so there is and indeed can be no such "tension" between the two because only one of them manifests itself! The sound of one hand clapping, peut-être?

You then note that
"4'33" challenges, or rather exploits to a radical extent, the social regiments of the modern concert life etiquette, experimenting on unsuspecting concert-goers to prove an important point."
That's a gross exaggeration, not least because the première was probably it sole performance when the concert-goers were indeed "unsuspecting" (assuming that there was no programme note about the piece that could be read before its "performance") and in its every subsequent airing the "unsuspecting" element will have vanished.

As to
"First, the choice of a prestigious venue and the social status of the composer and the performers automatically heightens audience's expectations for the piece. As a result, the listener is more focused, giving Cage's 4'33" the same amount of attention (or perhaps even more) as if it were Beethoven's Ninth. Thus, even before the performance, the reception of the work is already predetermined by the social setup of the concert. Furthermore, the audience's behavior is limited by the rules and regulation of the concert hall; they will quietly sit and listen to 4′33" of ambient noise. It is not easy to get a large group of people to listen to ambient noise for nearly five minutes, unless they are regulated by the concert hall etiquette."
Again, this is pretentious exaggeration. How many people attending a performance of 4'33" would be aware of its "composer"'s "social status" and who's to say how "prestigious" each such performance venue might be in any case? An audience can have few expectations of any piece to which it listens for the first time  - not just 4'33" - beyond what its members might have read or been told about it beforehand.

You then observe that
"The second point made by 4'33" concerns duration. According to Cage, duration is the essential building block of all of music. This distinction is motivated by the fact that duration is the only element shared by both silence and sound. As a result, the underlying structure of any musical piece consists of an organized sequence of "time buckets". They could be filled with either sounds, silence or noise; where neither of these elements is absolutely necessary for completeness. In the spirit of his teacher Schoenberg, Cage managed to emancipate the silence and the noise to make it an acceptable or perhaps even integral part of his music composition. 4'33" serves as a radical and extreme illustration of this concept, asking that if the time buckets are the only necessary parts of the musical composition, then what stops the composer from filling them with no intentional sounds?
The only way in which some people's expectations might not be met by 4'33" is in the lack of composerly intention in terms of the sounds to be listened to for its duration, but what does that really tell anyone beyond that fact that the composer either didn't want or was too lazy to input sounds from his own imagination into the piece and leave is audience listening to any sounds that might occur incidentally during its performance. The "buckets" idea is pretentious bordering on the preposterous and discretion and civility persuade me not to make a comment about what those buckets might usefully be filled with. Cage's assertion that duration is the essential building block of all music is at best a half-truth whose definite article should be replaced by the indefinite article, since it is just one such building block. I don;t see that Cage "emancipated" anything in this piece any more than his teacher Schönberg "emancipated" dissonance in any of his pieces.

I also do not accept that
"the work of music is defined not only by its content but also by the behavior it elicits from the audience",
because here only audiences at public performances are under consideration; when people listen to it in the privacy of their own personal spaces, no such "audience behaviour" pertains in any case.

As to
"In the case of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, this would consist of widespread dissatisfaction leading up to violent riots."
But that was not only at the première alone (the work entered the accepted canon very rapidly) but was also incited far more by the choreography than by the music!

Lastly,
"In Cage's 4′33″, the audience felt cheated by having to listen to no composed sounds from the performer. Nevertheless, in 4'33" the audience contributed the bulk of the musical material of the piece. Since the piece consists of exclusively ambient noise, the audience's behavior, their whispers and movements, are essential elements that fill the above-mentioned time buckets."
But here the audience concerned was the audience at the première who presumably were given no advance clue as to what to expect; once that was over, subsequent audiences would always know what to expect, thereby presumably defeating the original object; again, if the audience were to sit in stony silence and not cough or make any other audible noises, there would be no such "musical material" of which to speak in any case. You might see these ridiculous buckets as filled by something that might not even be present, whereas I would imagine them filled with - er - something else.

To claim that "Cage's work 4'33" did cause a revolution in music history and how we think about music, and the function of composers, performers, concerts and audiences" requires of those who make it that they first take up residence in cloud-cuckoo-land; Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schönberg, Stravinsky, Webern, Varèse, Xenakis and others could be said to a greater or lesser extent to have done those things, but the notion that Cage did likewise in 4'33" alone is, frankly, beyond fatuous.

[some guy]

It is amusing, though rather disturbing as well, to watch people argue, passionately, that this thing that has put their noses so far out of joint is so inconsequential as to not be worth any consideration at all. And the concentrated effort and excruciating detail gone into to prove this a completely ineffectual and unimportant thing.

[Monsieur Croche]

It is amusing, though rather disturbing as well, to watch people argue, passionately, that this thing that has put their noses so far out of joint is so inconsequential as to not be worth any consideration at all. And the concentrated effort and excruciating detail gone into to prove this a completely ineffectual and unimportant thing.

A-yep.  A veritable laugh riot... the comedy continued on whatever forum where you find a thread dedicated to this famous / infamous piece.  (I will remind my colleague that he forgot the innate -- and intense -- irony in the constructing of thesis-length essays countering, what is allegedly, uh, not a thing or nothing ;-)

Without reading some of these mini-theses length essays (a quick scan gives the entire scent, pro or con) I've arrived at the generality that some people who may well 'get' both the premise and influence of the piece simply do not want to admit either its premise or influence, as if, for a hypothetical example of non-reasoning, that to do so would somehow deny or negate Guillaume de Machaut, Brahms, or Shosty... i.e. any slight concession would be the entire undoing of all of Western classical music that is not this one piece by John Cage.

I don't know of any musicians, still in undergraduate or further, or pro musicians from the youngest to the most senior, who have either question or problem with this particular piece... all considering it, for starters, "a piece of music," lol.

Still, like the arrival of tonality after modality, 'atonality' after tonality, etc. each generation first coming upon these things will have to make their own of coming to terms with 'what is already a done deal of the past.'


Best regards

[James]

As soon as you mention 'for much longer than 4 and a half minutes' it really discredits your views about 4'33", which can last for however long is desired.

Does not .. what I'm saying is whether it was (arbitrarily) 4'33 or 40'33 or 4 hours .. all people would rather listen to actual music given that time, given that choice. And that is what happens in the world. So in that sense too it is a huge failure and totally insignificant, irrelevant.

But more importantly, more significantly - it does not in any shape or form shatter my original, main point that the so-called 'score' itself does not have within it or transmit or contain anything of what people here claim the thing to be. Only when it is/was later 'explained' using a lot of words do you have to 'perhaps' buy into the idea. The score, or a player sitting there don't do this. So as something in and of itself, it is totally ineffective, it's non-art, not music and a total failure.

[James]

If it is not important to you, why are you even bothering to discuss it?

It isn't important to me per se, never was a factor for me as a player, never was a factor for all of the music & musicians I love and know either .. I'm just chiming in trying to tell people to wake up. Many folks are clearly and sadly duped. You look at the score, you sit thru a performance nothing they claim this thing to be are there. It's all hinged on an explanation, with words. No different than my blank canvas example.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Does not .. what I'm saying is whether it was (arbitrarily) 4'33 or 40'33 or 4 hours .. all people would rather listen to actual music given that time, given that choice. And that is what happens in the world. So in that sense too it is a huge failure and totally insignificant, irrelevant.

But more importantly, more significantly - it does not in any shape or form shatter my original, main point that the so-called 'score' itself does not have within it or transmit or contain anything of what people here claim the thing to be. Only when it is/was later 'explained' using a lot of words do you have to 'perhaps' buy into the idea. The score, or a player sitting there don't do this. So as something in and of itself, it is totally ineffective, it's non-art, not music and a total failure.

I think it's really cute you are trying to talk about this in terms of 'the score' as if that is the music.

The real point of 4'33" is just this: open your ears and listen to the world around you. You can perceive sounds as music if you choose to. If you can't appreciate sounds in this way then the 'total failure' is on your part. You don't have to like it, but if you go around complaining that ambient sounds around you are 'non-art' or 'a total failure' then there is no way they will listen. A bird singing in a tree, cars skidding on asphalt and a washing machine aren't going to to care no matter what you say about the way they sound to you.

[James]

I think it's really cute you are trying to talk about this in terms of 'the score' as if that is the music.

There is a score for this thing - it contains no music. The person has to sit there in front of an audience and play nothing. Not only does the score & performance contain no music, it certainly does not contain anything you claim it to be below .. (ditto all the posts within this thread of a similar nature, who have bought into the explanation of it - just words)

The real point of 4'33" is just this: open your ears and listen to the world around you. You can perceive sounds as music if you choose to. If you can't appreciate sounds in this way then the 'total failure' is on your part. You don't have to like it, but if you go around complaining that ambient sounds around you are 'non-art' or 'a total failure' then there is no way they will listen. A bird singing in a tree, cars skidding on asphalt and a washing machine aren't going to to care no matter what you say about the way they sound to you.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There is a score for this thing - it contains no music. The person has to sit there in front of an audience and play nothing. Not only does the score & performance contain no music, it certainly does not contain anything you claim it to be below .. (ditto all the posts within this thread of a similar nature, who have bought into the explanation of it - just words)

I know it doesn't. It simply directs the pianist not to play anything. That's what 'tacet' means, silly.

The score doesn't contain the music, the music is what you hear. If you simply listen, there's no real need to talk about it.

[ahinton]

Because of John Cage's 4'33", and related works, several genres of music have come into being: ambient music, noise compositions, the use of field recordings in extended composition and the use of silence, or more accurately quasi silence in long works by Feldman and others.

You might not like these styles/genres but to deny Cage's influencing the course of music history is an allegation that is contrary to facts.

Whilst I can accept what you write in principle, what I should perhaps have been clearer about is what might be meant by "influencing the course of music history" in specific terms of its impact upon music making and the listener. Whilst (from your list above) ambient music arguably has achieved some kind of place in the grand scheme of things, its very purpose is contrary to that which is customary in much other music to the extent that listener concentration is not its primary aim; I think that it could reasonably be argued that none of the other categories have exerted material impact upon large numbers of listeners and, like certain other characteristics explored in some contemporary and relatively recent music, might accordingly be regarded as generating the interest mainly of relatively small numbers of specialist listeners.

I think that to seek to divorce the majority of listeners and how and to what they choose to listen from considerations of "the course of music history" and what might be thought to "influence" it is inherently misleading if not actually dangerous.

It is also important to bear in mind that, whilst a vast and ever-increasing diversity in musical expression, procedures, aims and purposes has undoubtedly manifested itself in the last 50 or so years, it is perhaps inevitable that some "new" persuasions might have a minor and temporary vogue before falling by the wayside and disappearing into that history. OK, it could be argued that many composers over the past few centuries have gone into and out of fashion, including some who have done both, but I don't think that this is quite the same consideration. To return to the specific example of 4'33", it is hard to see how it could influence a generation or more of composers in specific terms of their use of silence as one expressive tool in the compositional toolbox, especially as its very nature is that of a one-off; I would even doubt that it has influenced composers to be more fearless about their use of silence in scores in which intended sounds share a place with it.

[Keep Going]

Those among us such as James and Keep Going who deny the importance of 4'33" are simply living in denial of the actual historical facts surrounding the work and its impact.

1. Oddly enough, I was aware that there is a wiki article.

2. "simply living in denial of the actual historical facts". Hyperbole, again.

3. Important point: is it actually allowed for someone to express opinions of disagreement relating to this work? Because here, and elsewhere, as soon as someone does so they are put down and labelled as misguided or not getting it or myopic or denying importance or whatever.

It does not matter whether James or Keep Going ever "get" 4'33" and continue to insist that it is not important. 

4. I get 4'33". Really, I do. Again, it is possible to "get" it and be critical of it at the same time. This is obvious, surely.

5. Who said it was not "important"? I argued against your claim, that the work was new and/or revolutionary (see your next quote).

Cage's work 4'33" did cause a revolution in music history and how we think about music, and the function of composers, performers, concerts and audiences.

6. So, back to square one.

[ahinton]

The real point of 4'33" is just this: open your ears and listen to the world around you. You can perceive sounds as music if you choose to. If you can't appreciate sounds in this way then the 'total failure' is on your part. You don't have to like it, but if you go around complaining that ambient sounds around you are 'non-art' or 'a total failure' then there is no way they will listen. A bird singing in a tree, cars skidding on asphalt and a washing machine aren't going to to care no matter what you say about the way they sound to you.

I fear that you miss the point here. It's not about what I or anyone else might "like" or "dislike" and I take leave to doubt that many people would "complain" about "ambient sounds" around them being "non-art" or a "total failure" because, if they did, you'd struggle to hear anything anywhere - even those ambient sounds themselves - for the deafening noise made by those complaints; after all, we all are surrounded with such sounds for almost all of our waking moments but we don;t s a rule think consciously of them as "art" or non-art", "total success" or "total failure".

Your last sentence obviously makes sense but even that's not really the point, which is instead about reasonable expectation; you don't need 4'33" or any other piece of music to persuade you to listen to the ambient sounds around you by reason of making none of its own, since we can all listen (or try to avoid listening by means of noise-cancelling headphones if necessary) to such ambient sounds in our environments without being instructed, encouraged or even merely allowed to do so by Mr Cage in just one of his works.

It's not about the sounds or lack thereof as much as it is about expectation, but then anyone who knows in advance that they'll be sitting through 4'33" of silence from the performer and be able only to hear any incidental ambient sounds that may occur during that time-frame will come to it with the expectation of just that - in other words, no composed or improvised music per se; where's the big deal in that? - still less the potential to "influence the course of music history"?

4'33" seconds per se doesn't bother me as such; I do not like or dislike it or what purportedly lay behind it and am neither offended nor overjoyed by it. All that strikes me when people discuss it at such length (as I am painfully aware that I am doing myself) is the sheer paucity of musical or other interest that is inherent in it besides its evident ability to generate such lengthy discussion!

[some guy]

Okay.  I think it is obvious that no one is going to change their mind about Cage's 4'33".  Some of us think it is an important work others do not agree.

While the former is probably true, sadly, the latter is not. Everyone so far has very clearly expressed that it is an important work. Of course, there are the words, some of them, whose surface meaning plainly states that it's not important. But the very fact of the stating, in this instance, demonstrates that the piece powerfully affects everyone who comes across it. That is, has powerfully affected everyone who writes about it, whether with approval or with opprobrium.

If you really and truly believe that it is an inconsequential piece, then you won't say anything about it at all, ever. It's only because it does have consequence for everyone here that there is the heated discussion. The content of the discussion, the sides taken, doesn't matter for this point as much as the simple fact that the discussion exists.

[ahinton]

While the former is probably true, sadly, the latter is not. Everyone so far has very clearly expressed that it is an important work.

Really? When and where did I do that? Indeed, when and where did I do other than the opposite?

Of course, there are the words, some of them, whose surface meaning plainly states that it's not important. But the very fact of the stating, in this instance, demonstrates that the piece powerfully affects everyone who comes across it. That is, has powerfully affected everyone who writes about it, whether with approval or with opprobrium.

The notion that anything - and I do mean anything , so I am specifically not singling out 4'33" here - that is stated to be "not important" demonstrates thereby that it "powerfully affects everyone who comes across it", positively or negatively presumes standing language on its head. 4'33" would therefore appear to be no different to anything else whose content is so slender as to disable it from acquiring anything resembling "importance". I think that you might be mistaking the alleged or assumed "importance" of 4'33" itself for the sheer amount of talk and writing about it that its mere existence generates and whose very volume might otherwise suggest such importance. Logic determines that 4'33" would appear to be of no greater "importance" than the ambient sounds that occur during a "performance" of it and which would largely be identical were such "performance" not actually taking place.

If you really and truly believe that it is an inconsequential piece, then you won't say anything about it at all, ever. It's only because it does have consequence for everyone here that there is the heated discussion. The content of the discussion, the sides taken, doesn't matter for this point as much as the simple fact that the discussion exists.

Your assumption here presumes you to contend that everyone who might think to say something in response to an assertion of belief in the "importance" of 4'33" (for example, in the context of a discussion on a forum such as this one) and who disagrees therewith and believes the piece to be inconsequential should remain as silent as the piece itself, for fear of being accused of ascribing "importance" to it merely by reason of mentioning it in such a response; such abstention from dissension and passive compliance with your recommendation on that subject on the part of all those who believe it to be of little or no consequence would remove at a stroke any possibility of "discussion" of its "importance" or otherwise a stroke - and yet this is supposedly a discussion forum!

[Keep Going]

Everyone so far has very clearly expressed that it is an important work.

I would argue that not necessarily disagreeing that a work is important is not the same as very clearly expressing that it is.

But the very fact of the stating, in this instance, demonstrates that the piece powerfully affects everyone who comes across it. That is, has powerfully affected everyone who writes about it, whether with approval or with opprobrium.

I don't agree. The so-called 'heated discussion' can be driven by the reactions of people to said work. In my case, it was responding to sanantonio's opinion that 4'33" was a "A truly revolutionary piece of music.  Cage was able to create with this work something absolutely new in the history of music ... ". Outside of such a context I would never feel compelled to comment on 4'33".

It is akin to somebody saying "Kobe Bryant was the greatest player in NBA history". I might not particularly care about Kobe Bryant, dislike him, or ordinarily comment on how great or not great a player I think he was - but if somebody made a grand claim like that, I might feel compelled to make my opinion against that claim known.

It's only because it does have consequence for everyone here that there is the heated discussion.

Not necessarily (see above).

[Mister Sharpe]

Windsong (Harry Partch)

https://www.youtube.com/v/ZdQorwcpy3Q

Mallet percussion, but with non-traditional pitch/tuning.

Hey, did that have meaning?  I think sanantonio is inferring something...something correct...

[ahinton]

I would argue that not necessarily disagreeing that a work is important is not the same as very clearly expressing that it is.

Precisely.

The so-called 'heated discussion' can be driven by the reactions of people to said work. In my case, it was responding to sanantonio's opinion that 4'33" was a "A truly revolutionary piece of music.  Cage was able to create with this work something absolutely new in the history of music ... ". Outside of such a context I would never feel compelled to comment on 4'33".

Indeed; in fact, I would go farther and suggest that just because a discussion ensues is not even necessarily an indicator that it is "heated". In disagreeing with sanantonio's comment that you quote here, I would ask as follows:
1. What is the difference between a truly revolutionary piece of music and a falsely revolutionary one and how is the difference between the two categories factually defined?
2. What is "revolutionary" about creating something that masquerades as a piece of composed music to be performed without actually being such? - the lack of effort in producing performable musical content seems to sit uncomfortably with the notion of being "revolutionary" which might reasonably be thought to presuppose an effort to have been made in that regard.
3. What did Cage "create with this work" that was "absolutely new in the history of music"?
4. What part in the history of music can be played by a piece that deliberately eschews performed music despite having been written for a performer?

Whilst anyone is of course entitled to have an opinion about 4'33" and such opinions might differ widely, as we have seen here, I'm more concerned in the present context with facts than with opinions, hence my questions above.

It is akin to somebody saying "Kobe Bryant was the greatest player in NBA history". I might not particularly care about Kobe Bryant, dislike him, or ordinarily comment on how great or not great a player I think he was - but if somebody made a grand claim like that, I might feel compelled to make my opinion against that claim known.

Indeed - but just as not everyone has even heard of Kobe Bryant or NBA, not everyone has heard of Cage (although most who have heard of the latter will almost certainly have heard of 4'33"), so the extent to which with Bryant or Cage have impacted respectively upon the course of sporting or musical history must be open to question. Many more people have heard the music of Mozart than have heard that of Cage, but many more again have heard the music of neither; I do believe that attempted assertions about the impact and influence of either upon the course of musical history need to take due account of those facts.

[Andante]

If you really and truly believe that it is an inconsequential piece, then you won't say anything about it at all, ever.

Really someguy, you should know better, don't you realise that 4,33 was a pistake   

[James]

The score doesn't contain the music, the music is what you hear. If you simply listen, there's no real need to talk about it.

You're not understanding. You are right that the score contains no music, and the player isn't to play anything, but it stops there. The rest you are relating is not there, it's extra-musical. It is derived from things you've read or were told about this thing and what it is supposed to be about.