Test yourself: Can you tell the difference between music and noise? - Hanako Sawada
In 1960, American composer John Cage
went on national television
to share his latest work.
But rather than employing
traditional instruments,
Cage appeared surrounded
by household clutter,
including a bathtub, ice cubes,
a toy fish, a pressure cooker,
a rubber duck, and several radios.
Armed with these tools and a stopwatch,
he performed “Water Walk,”
setting off a series of sounds
with a serious expression
and incredible precision.
Some viewers found
the performance hysterical,
while others thought it was
completely absurd.
But most people watching likely shared
the same question:
is this even music?
This question is harder to answer
than you might think.
What we determine as music often
depends on our expectations.
For example, imagine you’re
in a jazz club listening
to the rhythmic honking of horns.
Most people would agree
that this is music.
But if you were on the highway hearing
the same thing, many would call it noise.
After all, car horns aren’t instruments
and these drivers aren’t
musicians... right?
Expectations like these influence how
we categorize everything we hear.
We typically think something sounds
more musical
if it uses a recognizable structure
or popular sounds
arranged in well-known patterns.
And even within the realm of music,
we expect certain genres to use specific
instruments and harmonies.
These expectations are based
on existing musical traditions,
but those traditions aren't set in stone.
They vary across different cultures
and time periods.
And in the early 20th century,
when many artists were pushing
the boundaries of their fields,
John Cage wanted to discover
what new kinds of music might exist
beyond those constraints.
He began pioneering new instruments
that blurred the lines
between art and everyday life,
and used surprising objects to reinvent
existing instruments.
He also explored new ways for music
to mingle with other art forms.
He and his creative and romantic partner,
Merce Cunningham,
held recitals where Cage’s music
and Cunningham’s choreography
would be created independently
before being performed together.
But whatever his approach,
Cage gleefully dared listeners to question
the boundaries between music and noise,
as well as sound and silence.
Perhaps the best example is one of Cage’s
most famous compositions—
a solo piano piece consisting of nothing
but musical rests
for four minutes and 33 seconds.
This wasn’t intended as a prank,
but rather, as a question.
Could the opening and closing
of a piano lid be music?
What about the click of a stopwatch?
The rustling, and perhaps even the
complaining, of a crowd?
Like the white canvases
of his painting peers,
Cage asked the audience to question
their expectations about what music was.
And while the piece didn’t evoke the drama
of some traditional compositions,
it certainly elicited a strong
emotional response.
Cage’s work frequently prioritized
these spontaneous, ephemeral experiences
over precise, predictable performances.
He even developed processes that left some
compositional decisions up to chance.
One of his favorite such systems
was the I Ching,
an ancient Chinese divination text.
Using just a handful of coins,
the I Ching allows readers
to produce a pattern of lines
which can be interpreted
to answer questions and offer fortunes.
But Cage adapted these patterns
into a series of tables
that generated different musical
durations, tempos, and dynamics.
Eventually, he even used early computers
to help produce these random parameters.
For some pieces, Cage went even further,
offering musicians incomplete compositions
notated with broad instructions,
allowing them to compose on the fly
with the help of his guidelines.
Some composers rejected Cage's
seemingly careless approach.
They believed it was the composer’s job
to organize sound and time
for a specific, intentional purpose.
After all, if these strange compositions
were music,
then where do we draw the line?
But like a bold explorer, Cage didn't
want to be bound by restrictions,
and he certainly didn't want
to follow old rules.
He dedicated himself to shattering
our expectations,
creating a series
of once in a lifetime experiences
that continue encouraging
musicians and audiences
to embrace the unexpected.
