And what does it all mean?

Last week on Facebook, I posted a clip of a very controversial piece of music. Most would not even call it music and I am a bit on the fence myself. Here is a link if you don’t see it below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4

John Cage’s 4’33” is a 4 minute 33 second song consisting of silence. “Written” in 1951, it is unquestionably an honest representation of how Cage viewed music. Cage believed that all sound was music and he welcomed randomness in sounds (one of his pieces consisted of throwing a floppy fish on piano strings). The general idea behind this particular piece was that the silence along with the audience reaction (random noise) creates the music.

There are a lot of interesting things to think about here and if you want a quick background on Cage and this piece, you can visit here and here.

What do we make of this? It is complicated of course. It might be tempting to immediately write this piece off as nonsense but while that may well be true, I would encourage you not to do so quickly.

The questions that really need to be asked here are difficult. As we watched art (classical) music move in this direction in the last century, what was really happening? What does this kind of art say about our culture?

One of the things I noticed in the heated discussion on Facebook is that younger people (especially musicians) were far more likely to accept this music as art while others dismissed it immediately out of hand. There is a significance to that that I will get to in a second.

Yes, there are big questions to wrestle with. Perhaps the most influential philosopher in modern evangelicalism as we know it was Francis Schaeffer and he talked about this at length in this clip which I strongly encourage you to watch: http://vimeo.com/19900851

I don’t necessarily completely agree with Schaeffer because his opinions are informed by his worldview and I have some problems with his worldview. But on the other hand, Schaeffer makes a point about this is very important: just because you don’t respect the beliefs of an artist does not mean that their work is junk. It is necessary to separate the beliefs behind the art from the technical aspects of the art itself when you discuss it.

I bring this up as a caution for those who talk to young people about distasteful cultural things like some pop music (such as the Cyrus/Thicke situation that occurred last week). In my opinion, it is a mistake to approach this from the standpoint that it is about bad music. That is in fact incorrect; much popular music is brilliant and produced at a very high standard. Trying to tell the younger generation that an artist can’t sing or that a piece of music is just noise doesn’t work. That kind of biased rhetoric does not convince anyone and does not foster respect.

The more legitimate way to address art is by attempting to dissect the worldview that generates it. Cage’s 4’33” is not a moral or immoral piece of music by itself in my opinion but there is a worldview behind it with moral ramifications. On this blog, I am not interested in trying to tell you what I think those ramifications are but there are hints everywhere for those that explore the topic a bit.

There is one controversial statement I will make though. It is highly inconsistent to champion modern classical music while condemning modern pop music. I am always bemused when I see Christian schools known for strong stands against popular music requiring their students to learn modern classical music. Maybe someone can help me understand where they are coming from but from my perspective, they are failing to differentiate between the art itself and the worldview behind the art.

So is this particular piece of work art? The answer is yes it is. Dismissing it out of hand is a mistake. It may even be great art. And I for one am not ready to hang moral context on this art. But there are moral issues in the wings to consider.