What Do You Hear?

April 12, 1992

As I regretted the death this week of Isaac Asimov, the prolific writer on many subjects, I leafed through his BOOK OF FACTS (one of the books I will not discard), this item leaped at me:

“The composer, John Cage’s ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 4’ (1953) never sounds the the same way twice. It is scored for twelve radios tuned at random.”

Perhaps my auditory organ is fragile because I shudder at being exposed to this bizarre blend. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards, the famous Puritan preacher, frightened his congregation with a fearsome description of Hell’s tortures and miseries. But I would choose to listen to such dreadful prophecies rather than listen to “Imaginary Landscape No. 4.”

Do you recall how Elijah in the Hebrew Scripture fled to the wilderness because he was afraid of being killed by Ahab and Jezebel? Elijah hid in a cave on Mt. Horeb for forty days and nights. Then, “the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here Elijah?’” Elijah answered, listing the forsaking of the Covenant by the people of Israel, the destruction of altars, the killing of prophets, and that his life too was threatened. The Lord told him to leave the cave and stand on the mountain. “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice,” commanding Elijah to return to the perils of his prophetic role to the Children of Israel.

Could Elijah have heard the still small voice if, instead of the loud rage of great winds, the clatter of shattered rocks, the tremors of earthquake, the roar of fire, he had been exposed to twelve radios randomly tuned? The still small voice might never have been heard.

The radical prophet, Amos, speaking the “Voice of the Lord,” says, (5/23)

“Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.”

I am a music lover with wide tastes. I'm a romantic (the Golden Oldies). Beethoven and Bach transport me to realms of joy and mystery. Show tunes turn me on – Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, Kiss Me Kate, A Chorus Line, Man of LaMancha, West Side Story, many more. The score of Les Miserables grabs me. I’m close to tears when I listen to The Song of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco. Lehar and Strauss are tuneful delights. The idealism and realism of the folk singers – Pete Seeger, Leadbetter, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary – help me to understand both injustice and hope in this strange world of ours. Hell, I even like Bobby Vinton singing and Frankie Yankovitch’s band playing polkas. But, twelve radios tuned randomly – count me out!

And yet, I’ve been thinking. I do not have the slightest qualification in the art of music and no warrant whatever to be a critic of John Cage. I remember a comment on Picasso (no conformist he) who defined “art as the lie that helps us tell the the truth.” I have no knowledge of the musical intent of John Cage when he created “Imaginary Landscape No. 4.” Maybe I should heed Polonius (few did in the play), “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

Could it be that John Cage was making a prophetic statement about modern life and culture? We live in a calamity of noise:

The screech and whine of a jet take-off
The nerve-rasping police-car siren
The irrational, disharmonic chorus of auto horns in a traffic jam
The stutter of the honker on a speeding ambulance
The raucous blare of a boom-box on a young man’s shoulder
The thousand-bee buzz of a power mower
The lionesque roar of a Semi
The repetitive crepitation of a defective muffler
And deafening combinations of the above plus many more noises you could list.

We are blessed that our ear and brain have filtering capacity to sort out singular sounds from eruption of noises that deluge us. Otherwise, we would go stark mad in this cacophonous culture. Was “Imaginary Landscape No. 4” the composer's warning?

Do not most of us, at times yearn for for the silence of the deep woods, the get-away to far islands, the isolation of a hill-top? Even in such retreats, there is not silence, but it is of a different order: the whispers of winds through the trees, the bird songs, the babbling brook chatting with the stones in the shallows, the crashing surf, peaceful or wild. Whether we do not or cannot take such journeys to serenity, we feel the deep-seated urge to escape the clash and clamor.

There is an authentic bond and balm when two persons (friends, lovers, spouses) can be silent together, have no need to interject nervous remarks. There is less communication when one or both always have to say something. There is communion in the peace of silent understanding. There is much silence in a Friends Meeting. Is that why they are named “Friends?” “I like the silent church...” wrote Emerson.

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:
I were but little happy, if I could say how much.”

(Shakespeare, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING)

John Cage made me think on these things, but I won’t listen to the sound of twelve radios randomly tuned. But I will search through my cassettes for that superb Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Sound of Silence.”