I've been concentrating a bit on my Education Blog during the last day or so, so I am now going to palm you off with someone else's writing. It's Allen Buchler, the music critic of the Conservative electro-organ of cultural commentary, Electric Review, writing about the performance of John Cage's 4'33", which was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Laurence Foster at the Barbican on January 16th, and televised live by BBC4 TV.

I've been fretting for some time now over the relative ease with which I find I can write about the visual arts, and the relative ease with which I can fling up illustrations of what I'm writing about, compared to music, which I find a lot harder to describe or illustrate, by comparison, for the kind of people I imagine to be the readers of this blog. So this chunk of writing fills a definite gap here.

The score of this piece (which was available for purchase in the foyer at the price of £4.33) is simplicity itself. Silence is to be maintained for the stated period, divided into three sections, the lengths of which can be arbitrarily determined. Although the piece was originally conceived for piano solo, the orchestra rose to the challenge and gave a technically faultless performance. I do however have serious reservations about the interpretation.

And the convenient thing about that is that you all know, approximately speaking, what silence sounds like. No need to link to that, or have a box at the side full of it.

The enigma of 4'33", which Cage himself was careful to maintain, is whether it is serious or is a joke. The joke aspect is apparent to us – it is music catching up, 25 years late, with Duchamps. That there may be a serious – or at least non-trivial – point to consider in this jape (as with Duchamps), I have tried to adumbrate above. The only way in which you can try to catch both these (and any other) aspects is to play the piece absolutely po-faced.

The performance interestingly demonstrated this. Foster mounted the podium and lowered his baton as the indication that the work had commenced. Nobody stirred – not in the orchestra, or even in the audience. The absence of coughing or spluttering was in fact astonishing. No-one wanted to break the spell, to giggle, to boo – we were genuinely held in suspense, the more so as we had no idea at what point the first section would end, or indeed what we might do at this release. As it happened, when the baton was raised to mark this event, we did, remarkably, what we always do — cough, mutter to our companions, stretch a little. This was also in its way interesting, but then I am afraid Foster broke the spell – he drew out his handkerchief and, in the time-honoured affectation of the orchestral maestro, mopped his brow. So now we were all safe – it was clearly just for laughs. The last two sections were marked by a notable lack of concentration compared to the first section, particularly after a further lapse at the end of the second section, when the orchestra-members turned the page of their parts.

Well, it is certainly a valid interpretation of 4'33", but not, I fear, one that reaches its full potential. But perhaps the perfect 4'33" is as elusive as the perfect 'Ring'.

Buchler is a conscientious reviewer, and if you are at all interested in the more serious American composers (Antheil, Copland, Cowell, Ives, Schuman (nothing to do with Robert Schumann)) of recent times, I recommend that you read the whole thing, and for that matter track down Buchler's other writings for Electric Review.

(By the way, Alice Bachini also comments on 4'33", here. And she supplies some sort of link to it.)

I was reminded of Electric Review's continuing existence by my friend Bunny Smedley, who also writes for it. Bunny herself writes about the visual arts, her line being that Modern Art is something that libertarians in particular, but non-lefties generally, ought to relax about and enjoy rather than fulminate at, as I sometimes do here and expect to go on doing. I suspect that I take Modern Art more seriously than she does. Guess: she thinks that at worst Modern Art is stupid; I think that at worst Modern Art is evil.

Bunny's latest piece deals at length with the same Philip Guston whom I wrote about here the other day but only very briefly.

My thanks to Bunny for the email, and my congratulations to all at Electric Review for their most interesting publication.

I have long known about Electric Review. (As I say, Bunny is a friend.) But I have refrained from linking to it because until now I couldn't get the links to work properly, and feared that others might have the same experience. Worse, I didn't want even to read it, in case – as I am sure would have happened constantly – I wanted to comment about something in it here. Very annoying. I'm glad to say that all such nonsense is now a thing of my past. Electric Review has now had a retread of some complicated sort and all now seems to be working fine.