On pleasant summer evenings, the doors are left open, so that patrons can listen from benches outside. The hall, made primarily of oak and pine, is rough-hewn and barnlike. I went up for the day, wanting to experience the piece in its native habitat. This past July, the pianist Pedja Muzijevic included “4'33" ” in a recital at Maverick, which is in a patch of woods a couple of miles outside Woodstock. At a subsequent performance, she asked the composer Earle Brown, “Now, Earle, don’t you think that John has gone too far this time?” Someone reportedly hollered, “Good people of Woodstock, let’s drive these people out of town!” Even Cage’s mother had her doubts. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.” Indeed, some listeners didn’t care for the experiment, although they saved their loudest protests for the question-and-answer session afterward. “You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. “There’s no such thing as silence,” Cage said, recalling the première. It has been called the “silent piece,” but its purpose is to make people listen. He was performing “4'33",’’ a conceptual work by John Cage. On August 29, 1952, David Tudor walked onto the stage of the Maverick Concert Hall, near Woodstock, New York, sat down at the piano, and, for four and a half minutes, made no sound. Photograph by Irving Penn / © 1947 (Renewed 1975) Condé Nast Publications Inc.
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