John Cage's 4'33'' performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (38.5 MB movie from Ubuweb).

I wrote about this piece before. When I saw the film of the performance at London's Barbican Centre 4'33'' suddenly reminded me of an excerpt from a church service. I mean the moment when the pastor has finished his explicit prayer and when he says to the fold:

For maybe ten seconds everyone tries to be silent now and I have always felt an extremely oppressive atmosphere in these few moments. I could never pray for anything and somehow this gave me a bad conscience. I know now what I would pray for during a performance of 4'33''. That the bloody thing should stop immediately. And the greatest about this prayer is that it will finally even be answered.

The funny thing about the performance is that the people seem to feel quite similarly. The applause after the piece is extraordinary long and frenetic. The audience enjoys the clapping much more than the applause after a conventional piece of music. It is the release from the false silence. Come to think of it, 4'33'' culminates in the applause of the audience.

P.S. I very much wonder about Momus calling Kracht a friend. Politically they are light years apart, I guess, and the passage above is the most tasteless fashion garbage I have read for a long time.

I temporarily suspended the javascript version of my blo.gs blogroll as it seems to slow down the site considerably. Blo.gs is about to be sold to a new owner. It is supposed to continue as before but maybe I have to change to blogrolling or another service. Proposals are welcome.