[UPDATED] In February of 1948, John Cage gave a lecture at Vassar, heralding his intention to write a silent piece:
I have, for instance, several new desires (two may seem absurd, but I am serious about them): first to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to the Muzak Co. It will be [3 or] 4 1/2 minutes long – these being the standard lengths of “canned” music, and its title will be “Silent Prayer.”
(The second desire was to write a piece for radios, which resulted in Imaginary Landscape No. 4.) The words in brackets are often omitted when quoting this passage: often it’s simply four and a half minutes, sometimes three or four and a half. I’ve done a lot of reading about Muzak, including the lengthy account in Joseph Lanza’s delightful book Elevator Music, but I can’t find anything confirming that Muzak was indeed measured out in these standard lengths. Can anyone point me to evidence that this was (or wasn’t) in fact the case? (You might get yourself thanked in the acknowledgements to my book.)
(I hope no one minds that PostClassic has officially become a John Cage-centered blog for the summer. Back to my usual ill-considered rants in September.)
UPDATE: Commenter syro0 suggests, echoed by Steve Layton and John Shaw:
Probably this is too simple, and admittedly I don’t know about the exact technology used by Muzak, but I don’t think it’s quite coincidental that 3 and 4 1/2 minutes are about the limitations of the 10-inch and 12-inch 78 rpm records of the day.
Actually, I’m beginning to think this is it. I had assumed that there was something about the segments being exactly 3 or 4 1/2 minutes in order to fit into some kind of programming scheme, because I know Muzak programmed different moods and tempos for each hour of the day. From its inception in 1934, Muzak operated by running wires from phonographs. Since electromagnetic tape technology was a product of World War II espionage, I thought maybe by 1948 they’d be using tape instead of records, but perhaps not. One article I read suggested that 4’33” was deliberately three seconds too long to fit into a Muzak slot, but now this doesn’t make any sense, since a 12-inch 78 could hold between four and five minutes. Maybe it is this simple. Cage’s reference to “canned” music, if all he meant was 78 rpm records, had misled me.
Three cheers! We did it! You’re all in the book!Â