Water Music

John Cage’s willingness to open his compositions to the unpredictable and the instantaneous makes him a key figure above all from American Art from the fifties and sixties. Inspired by Asian thought he comprehended his work primarily as organizing intentional and coincidental listening experiences within a certain time-frame. In the early fifties he also integrated visual elements into his compositions and develops them to complex media-pieces. Thus, in “Water Music” the element of water not only sets the theme - as in Georg Friedrich Händels "Water Music" - but literally becomes part of the composition. The score demands that the pianist pours water from one vessel to another, and submerges and resurfaces a pipe. The piano must also be prepared by inserting objects between the strings, a radio must be switched on and off, and a pack of cards must be used. The audience can follow all these activities, which are meticulously timed down to fractions of seconds, as the ten-page score is exhibited on the podium like a poster for everyone to see.