> His most famous piece, 4'33", is designed to be played by any combination of instruments - but musicians are instructed not to play them. This is even better played back from a digital recording. You need those gold audio cables to truly appreciate the silence.
I personally learned about 4'33" in a music class, where it was performed live -- basically it was 4'33" of ambient noise, but there was a lot of tension if you didn't know what to expect. During the final exam for the class, the professor would play some recording and we were supposed to identify the music, and all of us would start writing "John Cage's 4 minutes 33 seconds" when the professor was too slow to start the next song.
There was also an incident where apparently Mike Batt copied 4'33" and named his song "A One Minute Silence", which resulted in an 6-figure court settlement[1], although later news said it was just £1000[2]. I also heard a version of the story that they didn't settle at all, because John Cage's publishers couldn't prove which minute out of the 4'33" was copied.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/