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Listening Report on John Cage’s Water Walk

 Sarah Kumar

Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath

The Future of (American) Music

05 Mar. 2023

Listening Report on John Cage’s Water Walk

The video starts with the introduction of the various items in the room John Cage’s explanation that the title of the composition is Water Walk because it “contains water” and he “walks during its performance” (Water Walk 0:20). Furthermore, the host clarifies that the “sounds are not accidental in their sequence” which is why John Cage will be using a stopwatch during the performance (0:48). According to Cage, “[m]usic is purposeful purposelessness” which in turn is an “affirmation of life” (“Lecture Slides” 7). This becomes evident in his actions during the performance in which he walks around lifting the lid of a pot with boiling water in it, putting ice cubes in a glass of water, or filling a kettle with water from the bathtub. While these actions may look random, they have purpose in that they are purposelessness.

The sounds of this composition are reminiscent of everyday life noise. Usually, people do not think about too much about the sounds they produce while they go on about their day, which I think might be because we tend to drone out what we have come to associate background noise. When we listen to music, however, we do so consciously, therefore associating what we hear with what we think music is. It is similar to how noise from a construction site might be seen as bothersome and annoying but when listening to it in the context of industrial music, it becomes music. In his composition Water Walk, John Cage creates every day sounds that, though they sound random, in a different context can be seen as music in its own way.

At around halfway in the video, he puts a vase into the bathtub and waters the flowers inside it, lifts the lid of the pot with steaming hot water in it, hits a metal plate, and pours a drink into the cup he previously put ice cubes into. After that, he hits various objects, including the keys of a piano, and whistles on a pipe he partially submerges in water. Around the end, he pushes several objects on the table to the ground. His actions have a comical aspect to them, as can be heard from the laughing audience. If every sound, as mundane and random as it might be, can be part of the composition, then even the audience’s noise can be seen as part of it since their laughs belong to the category of sound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Herzogenrath, Bernd. Water Walk. Google Drive – Reader FUTURE OF MUSIC, 30 Nov. 2023, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16seCK28wGx507QcHWjhR4KaJEr_jbwIt?usp=sharing. Accessed 5 Mar. 2023.
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