The Null Device

One Minute's Silence

Re: the 1'00" thing. Apparently it's not as absurd as it has been made out to be. Mike Batt, the composer in question is not being sued for putting a track of silence on his CD, but rather, he is being billed for royalties because he credited it to John Cage. And then, when billed for writing royalties, he claimed that the silence credited to Cage was his own, and not Cage's. Which is still absurd, but not the neo-Galambosian outrage it was reported to be.

Batt had used Cage's name for "obvious reasons," Caprioglio said to evoke Cage's provocative 1952 composition. "If Mr. Batt wants to produce a minute of silence under his own name," he conceded, "we would obviously have no right to the royalties."

So in a sense, Batt's defence comes down to "I credited John Cage as a joke, but shouldn't be expected to pay real royalties, because 4'33" is not a real composition"; which sounds a bit too much like the "modern art is rubbish" argument. (via the Horn)

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