ITunes, in what surely must be an early April Fool’s Day joke, is giving away a download of the first movement of John Cage’s 4’33″. To buy the sheet music of the piece, and give its three movements their tacet due, will run you $5.95. More if you wish to perform it in public.
I used to work in a sheet-music store in Bloomington, Indiana, and we sold 4’33″ for $4.33. We thought that was the height of hilarity, and we had probably been inside a sheet-music store for too long.
And while I’m on the topic…why doens’t iTunes sell the performance of 4’33″ that the Magnetic Fields included on their Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees album? When the two albums were combined in 1994, the Fields used 4’33″ to separate them. ITunes should totally be selling this for $0.99. The booklet lists John Cage and everything.