The idea is that you listen to the noise around you instead of music, but BBC Symphony Orchestra general manager Paul Hughes said that
mostly what you could hear [at that premiere] was people getting up and walking out
He was being interviewed about a John Cage Uncaged weekend at the Barbican, which included a performance of the piece broadcast on Radio 3 — which required them to turn off the station’s emergency system which kicks in whenever there’s too much silence.
The broadcast prompted some magnificent responses, including phrases such as
clearly a gimmick
self proclaimed intellectuals
and — praise be to see one out in the wild!
Is this how our licence fee money is being used?
The broadcast does raise a question, though: are you supposed to listen to the ambient noise from the concert hall, or the stuff around you at home? Do two sets of ambient noise make it a completely different work?
Either way, you can still listen to it yourself and make up your own mind about it. The video is 7'20" — it’s the 12" remix:
(It isn’t. I am a child)
And…
…if that isn’t enough extreme emotion for you for one day, it’s also the 152nd anniversary of the Natural Creeping Baby Doll being patented in the United States.
It was the work of one George Pemberton Clarke, and is now held in the National Museum of American History — mercifully not on display. It was marginally less terrifying when it eventually went into production:
You can find out more about it (and the horrifically racist catalogue it was advertised in) on this blog
Anyway: Please don’t have nightmares. Do sleep well.
