4'33", 0'00", Solos in Song Books, WGBH-TV, and ONE[sup]3[/sup]: Variations on a Disciplined Action

The most articulate negative interpretation of 4'33" is expressed by David Tame, who sarcastically writes that Cage "no doubt took considerable pains to compose" this "masterpiece," and that it should "be viewed as nothing but a joke; cheap, unnecessary, and perhaps also, ego-centric" (Tame 1984, 105-106). Richard Taruskin echoes Tame's view, stating that 4'33" is the "ultimate aesthetic aggrandizement, an act of transcendent empyrialism" (Taruskin 1993, 34). The most provocative contemporary critical interpretation is by Caroline Jones, who attempts to make the case that 4'33" is an example of "closet-case" homosexual art sensibility in which "silence" becomes both a "shield and protest" to unacceptable political, aesthetic, and sexual practice during the "cold war" (Jones 1993).