Photograph: Régis Bossu/Sygma/Getty
In her letter (Want to get rid of a earworm? Try John Cage, 22 December), Joan Friend says she has listened to different versions of 4’33’’ and that “they all sound the same”. This is impossible, because the whole point of the piece is that during it we hear the sounds all around us.
Composed after Cage had experienced an anechoic chamber, a room without echoes where true silence is possible, the score for the piece is marked “Tacet” (an instruction in music which tells the player not to play), so here we have what appears to be a piece where nothing happens.
