Water Walk (1959)

This was written specifically to be performed on television - it premiered on an Italian TV show, and then later was performed on the American show I've Got a Secret. There's a recording of the latter performance on youtube that's well worth checking out. As a recording of the composition, it's not great - it's fairly bad quality, and it isn't even a faithful performance since it should have involved radios, but Cage was unable to play these due to a union dispute. But as a piece of television, it's wonderfully bizarre, and there are couple of things about it that are notable. First, the interview before the performance contains one of my favourite Cage quotes. After the host points out that some people are going to laugh at his music, Cage responds, "I consider laughter preferable to tears." Second, more notably, people do laugh. But their laughter strikes me as perfectly good-natured. It really sounds like the audience is enjoying Cage's performance.

A lot of people are very dismissive of experimental music. Cage, unsurprisingly, tends to receive a great deal of criticism from these folks. I've long tried - thus far completely unsuccessfully - to persuade my girlfriend that he wasn't just a pretentious charlatan. He was a sincere composer, and some people genuinely enjoy his music. (No doubt that some people inspired by Cage are pretentious charlatans, but that's hardly his fault.) It's very difficult to shake the impression some people have that only "serious arty types" enjoy it, and really even they are only pretending to enjoy it. However, the reaction of the audience of I've Got a Secret suggests another way of approaching Cage's work: as something amusing, humorous, and fun. I don't think Cage ever encouraged people to see his work this way. But he didn't discourage this, either.

In fact, I think modern art in general would be far better received by the public if more people involved with it dropped the pretension, affectation, and dreariness and just embraced the fact that a lot of what they're doing is really very silly. One of my favourite contemporary artists is Jonathon Keats, largely because he clearly has a good sense of humour.

Anyway, I'm listening to a recording of Water Walk by a couple of fellas called "Duo Conradi-Gehlen". It's a really easy listen - only three minutes long, and much more active than usual for Cage: there's no silence, and loads of interesting sounds. Despite that this was composed to be both seen and heard, I think it works much better just hearing it. Aside from the fact that watching someone fill up a bathtub or turn on a radio is kinda boring, the sounds are bound to seem much more mundane if you can see them being produced. It removes the mystery and the sense of exploration.