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Listening Report to John Cage – Water Walk

 

I tried to approach this special musical piece Water Walk by John Cage in two different ways. First, I watched the video and tried to get some initial thoughts about it. But the television show atmosphere made it difficult to concentrate only on the music. Listening to the piece a second time, I tried to think of anything it could remind me of. So I started the video a second time and immediately thought of science fiction television shows like Star Trek. It felt hard and challenging to think of this piece in a serious way. It does not feel like music to me because of the lack of a melody. At least for me no melody is recognizable. I could imagine it as a background sound for something else. While listening, I wondered if John Cage really considered this to be music and how he could stay serious during the whole act. The laughing audience especially disturbed my attention. But the kind of sarcastic explanation of the name Water Walk from John Cage himself almost impeded my listening experience. Nonetheless it did manipulate my subconscious by making me think of gentle and soft burbling water in a small stream.

Throughout watching and listening simultaneously I thought of it as a comedic or parodistic sketch. Because seeing him creating the sounds kills the mysterious and horror movie vibe I felt from the very beginning of the piece.

 It definitely has a comedic element, because it is a type of music which nobody would expect the first time listening. Especially due to the mixture of instruments and random objects that are being used to make the sounds with water. To me, it sounds like a collection of sounds created by diverse objects in the first encounter with water. What makes it interesting to me is the variations of sound one can make with water. Sometimes it sounded like a thunderstorm approaching. Other times it reminded me of a cat running around the house and accidentally knocking over objects or running over the piano when the clinking sound appeared. It is a compilation of sounds which I would not consider as music when I heard it for the first time. The fact that every little sound is calculated and John Cage takes the time while producing his piece made me question if you could always generate the same emotions and sensations. And I asked myself if John Cage was capable of consistently creating the same sounds while knocking over the objects? I guess that wasn't always possible and that made every performance unique. However, I still don't understand the artistic ambition behind it.

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