"4'33'' is music reduced to nothing, and nothing raised to music. It cannot be heard, and is heard anywhere by anyone at any time. It is the extinction of thought, and has provoked more thought than any other music of the second half of the twentieth century." — Paul Griffiths.

Just when I thought music could get no more experimental, while I was doing my paper for Arnold Schoenberg, I discover John Cage, who pushed music to its logical extreme, and produced a piece that consists of nothing…. Or something? I don’t know whether to consider 4’33” music or not, but I do know that it is an idea (and some ideas are art). Just as Jackson Pollock pushed visual art to its extreme with his abstract expressionist paintings, and art had no place to go but back to representational paintings, maybe music will go back to more traditional ways, I doubt it though. John Cage was born in Los Angeles on September 5, 1912. He was born into an Episcopalian family, and his grandfather regarded the violin as the “instrument of the devil.” He dropped out of college in his second year, and moved to Europe for 18 months, and there he wrote his first pieces of music. He returned to the U.S. in 1931. When he discovered the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Cage immediately fell in love. When later they met, Schoenberg told Cage he would tutor him for free on the condition he "devoted his life to music". Cage readily agreed, but stopped lessons after two years. He began to experiment with percussion instruments, and gradually came to use rhythm as the basis of his music instead of harmony. Around 1938, he attended the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, WA. After leaving the school, he joined the Chicago School of Design. It was during this time that Cage began to introduce chance into his music, and he was heavily influenced by the I Ching. In 1948, he joined the faculty of the Black Mountain College, and it was here he produced his famous 4’33”, which is nothing but four and a half minutes of silence. The three movement piece premiered on August 29, 1952. John Cage died on August 12, 1992.