messiaen & cage

New Music Ensemble Connects. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, A & E Short Takes. 14 July 2008.

Space limitations prevented me from fully describing how the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble presented Cage’s 4’33”. Immediately following the conclusion of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, Danny Spiegel closed the piano’s lids and walked off stage. The remaining quartet members sat in the near dark of the stage that was lit by three strategically placed candles. After some time passed (and the audience, which probably did not expect a silent piece, began to become a little restless) Nathalie Shaw (violin) stood up, positioned her music stand in a single spotlight, walked to one of the three candles and blew it out. She then walked off-stage. The remaining quartet members, cellist Norbert Lewandowski and clarinetist Campbell Macdonald, repeated this process. The only variation was that when Macdonald got to his candle (the last remaining lit) he only pretended to blow it out.

I have learned to accept and go along with most of PNME’s theatricality. In the past few years they have become surer of themselves and are presenting their events with fewer pretensions. Before this particular concert I was curious to see what they would come up with for Cage’s work. I expected a visual accompaniment, like a backward ticking clock, or some other method depicting the passage of musical time.

The theatrics of PNME’s presentation made a strong association with Handel’s Farewell Symphony. But what also happened is that the point of Cage’s work was misrepresented. His work is not about silence as a musically extinguishing device. It is about the inability of pure silence to overcome any environmental ambient sounds, including the sounds of our own circulatory systems.

In the end, I think the PNME was trying to make a literal connection with the idea of ending time and silence. It’s a big, philosophical question, and I applaud them for having the artistic fortitude to ask such a question. I’m just not convinced that Cage’s work was the right work for the end-of-time-left-with-silence connection.