Music for Meditation: John Cage

By Mark George, President and CEO

Music for Meditation is a weekly recommendation of music of a reflective nature. This week’s piece is probably the closest we will come to actual medication. As usual, find a comfortable chair or lie down, but DO NOT turn on your smart speaker or put in earbuds. This will be an exercise in pure listening.

My recommendation this week is the work entitled 4’ 33” by the American composer John Cage. Cage may be the most important composer of the twentieth-century whose music is largely unknown. While Cage studied composition with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, he was influenced the most by his studies of Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy. John Cage was a prolific writer and innovative thinker. He expanded the definition of music, musical instruments, compositional techniques and the experience of listening to music. Among his most significant ideas was the introduction of chance elements into music composition where the composer constructs a limited number of musical possibilities at various junctures of a work but leaves the decision of which to choose to chance. Cage also pioneered the use of prepared piano where an acoustic piano is manipulated by inserting objects on hammers and in between strings to create a new set of pitches and timbres.

The influence of Eastern Philosophy is apparent in 4’ 33”, which might be Cage’s most popular work. The piece, composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments, isn’t music in the traditional sense. Originally intended to be performed in a concert hall, the composer asks the musicians to enter onto the stage and sit quietly for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The audience simply listens to the silence, which turns out to not be silent at all. In the stillness of the performance, the “audience” hears their own heartbeats, a bird or automobile outside the window, or the sound of someone shifting weight in their seat.

Silence has always been an essential part of music (look at a score and notice all the symbols indicating rest) but 4’ 33” of course, takes this to the extreme. I tried “listening” to the piece in my home by setting the timer on my phone to 4’ 33” and finding a relatively quiet spot to lie down. You might be surprised how “long” it takes these few minutes to pass OR you might be surprised how quickly they pass. The experience is very much like meditation. In my period of concentrated listening I heard, among other things, the sound of my own breathing, the laughter of the five-year twins who live next door, the rumbling of trash bins from the alley, the cycling on of the air conditioning system, and eventually my own beating heart. Not a bad respite in the middle of the day. Enjoy.

4’ 33” (1952)                            John Cage (1915-1992)

Complete Music for Meditation archive >>