Article Blog 2 - Sound

Cage comes across to me much more of an artist than a music composer. This is not to say that he has no passion or talent, but more of the direction that he sought to make people think, breaking boundaries in what people were comfortable listening to. When the article discusses the sorts of performances Cage does, they come across as slightly pretentious and unimpressive, but I don’t feel like this is completely true. On the surface, his acts of controversy are laughable, but given the artistic insight of his pieces, it's hard to say Cage was an idiot. After sitting on how I imagine his performances to actually be, I think that his positions might hold some merit. I approached it the same way I would approach a piece of obscure fine art. In such a piece as “4’33”,” it’s not about the piece itself, but how we experience it and reflect inwards in times of silence. Much like fine art, we do not find value in the materials being used but the aesthetic it gives and the emotions it makes us, the viewer, feel. I imagine being physically in the space where the music (or “music”) is the ultimate way of experiencing any one of his pieces, and is something that actually ended up appealing to me after thinking about it. As controversial as his “music” might have been, he certainly pushed the boundaries of art and started conversations that would have most certainly not been if he had not done so.