Composer Speaks Out on His Cagey Use of Silence

What started out as a moment of silence has become drawn out and noisy. Classical crossover artist Mike Batt hasn’t run out of things to say about the one minute of dead air he recorded as a cheeky homage to composer John Cage--a CD track that landed Batt in legal trouble.

The silent moment, on the debut album of Batt’s rock/classical group the Planets, nods in the direction of a landmark 1952 Cage composition called “4’33”,” in which the composer asks the musicians to play nothing for four minutes and 33 seconds. Batt called his version “A One Minute Silence” and credited it to Batt/Cage. When Cage’s publishers in New York and London, Peters Edition, complained and threatened to sue, a British copyright agency withheld some of Batt’s royalties. Batt said he laughed at first--but when the copyright agency reversed itself and determined there had been no infringement, he also thought he could laugh last. He staged a musical duel of his silence and Cage’s in London and, just this week, released a single of “One Minute Silence.”

“They didn’t have a leg to stand on,” Batt says from London. “So I rang them up and said, ‘Look, I want all the royalties back, but as a gesture of sportsmanship, I will make a donation to the John Cage Trust.’ Because even though I’ve made fun of him, even though I find avant-garde Minimalism tiresome, I do respect John Cage’s particular brand of humor. I would make a gesture, in the manner of a victor’s handshake, not in the manner of a beaten plagiarist. And we did agree that we would not disclose the sum.”

Neither the trust, which administers Cage’s estate, nor Batt will reveal the size of that gesture. Six figures has been reported, but, Batt hints, that is far too high. Reports also said that Batt had been sued and settled out of court, neither of which is true.

“I said publicly I’d cheerily go to jail if the British court ruled that I was a plagiarist for recording a minute’s worth of silence,” says Batt, underlining that he made the donation of his own free will. “My mother said, ‘Which minute of the four minutes 33 do they allege that you stole?’ ”

Says Nicholas Riddle, managing director of Peters Edition, “Cage would find it fascinating that 50 years after the piece was first composed we’re still talking about it.”