Is It Music?

One of my favorite Philosophy lessons!

Our artist for December, Yves Klein, is most famous for his nearly 200 monochrome paintings in International Klein Blue, but that wasn't his entire exploration of reductionism.

Klein also presented "The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility: The Void" in 1958. "The Void" was an entirely white gallery space with only an empty cabinet in it. Apparently the aura of his presence was artwork enough! "I will concentrate alone in the room, and then present a sensitive pictorial space to the public," he stated. Three thousand visitors arrived on opening night.

Yves Klein also wrote a symphony called "Monotone-Silence," a piece of music which consisted of one single chord played full force for 20 minutes and then the playing of silence for 20 minutes.

A Sound, Then Silence (Try Not to Breathe)
The New York Times - Sep 17, 2013

Is this music?

Today we tackled this question. We began by reading The Enchanted Symphony by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton at snacktime. The children were astonished to hear about the concert for 2,292 plants in Barcelona during COVID, and even were startled to learn that plants grow better when classical music is played to them!

Then I explained the idea of Klein's symphony. Is this music? What is music?

We listened to four pieces and after each one we discussed if it WAS music, if it WASN'T music, and why.

If your child wants to share these pieces of music with you, they are here:

1) Pie Jesu sung by Anna Netrebko
from Requiem by Andrew Lloyd Weber

2) O Fortuna
from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

3) Voice Piece for Soprano & Wish Tree
Yoko Ono

4) 4'33"
John Cage

I have taught this lesson many many times, always with these exact four clips. I will be very sad if they ever leave YouTube! I so enjoy hearing the children's responses to them. They have many thoughtful things to say.

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