John Cage’s Radio Music, composed in 1956, is intended to be performed as a solo or ensemble piece for 1 to 8 performers, each using one radio. The piece has a specified duration of exactly six minutes.
Radio Music was composed during a period when Cage heavily used chance operations, derived from the I Ching, to make decisions for his works. This technique aimed to eliminate personal choices and emotional decisions from the composition. Cage himself stated that he didn’t believe in randomness, only in a person’s idea of it, and his use of the I Ching represented his conception of randomness by removing his personal choice.
Radio Music: The Score
The score for Radio Music consists of instructions for four sections, each similar to the others. These instructions relate to actions the performer can take while interpreting the piece and bear no resemblance to conventional musical notation. The score indicates 56 frequencies between 55 and 156 kHz, notated with numbers rather than on a musical staff. All these choices were made using chance operations.
The sounds produced during the performance depend entirely on what is being broadcast on the chosen frequencies at that specific time and location. Cage specified that the performers should use portable, self-contained receivers, implying that no external amplification should be fed into a central mixing board. The instructions also include the use of a volume controller. The resulting sound from pieces composed this way has an unintended uniformity.
Radio Music is one of several works by Cage that utilize radio receivers. His interest in radio as a musical instrument is also demonstrated in works such as Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) for 12 radios and 24 performers, Credo in Us (1942), Speech 1955 (1955), Water Walk (1959), and Variations IV (although radios are not specifically mentioned in the Variations IV score).
In Imaginary Landscape No. 4, performers operated frequency and volume dials according to specific instructions, with the result varying depending on local programming. Cage used radios in these works precisely because he had absolutely no idea what sounds would come from their speakers. This was an early exploration of chance operations to liberate music from his own taste and ego.
Radio Music: In Performance
Performing Radio Music presents unique challenges, particularly concerning the radio receivers themselves. Cage does not specify the frequency range, only numbers to be tuned. One suggested approach for performance is to recalculate the numbers or tuning to correspond to the scale of the radios at hand or to create a custom scale on tape to stick onto the receiver. Using modern FM radios is considered a complete misunderstanding of Cagean aesthetics. On modern FM receivers, stations typically come in clearly, resulting mostly in commercial music that would sound like a collage.
Furthermore, FM radio’s limited range eliminates the “adventurous character of tuning into remote radio stations.” The noise between stations (static) was anticipated and is considered an essential part of the piece, which is often missing or too dampened in recordings using modern radios with automatic tuning and squelch circuitry. Older, cheaply produced “six transistor” radios from the sixties are suggested as a good choice, while original vacuum tube types from around 1951 are problematic due to battery requirements.
Because the availability of radio airwaves changes over time, a historical performance in the sense of a re-creation is impossible. The piece would never sound the same as it did at its conception. However, one can argue that the changes the piece undergoes due to historically informed performance are an intrinsic part of the Cagean aesthetic. An interesting possibility is that, in the distant future, performing the piece might result in nothing but silence—a scenario the source suggests Cage would have welcomed.
Our recording of John Cage’s Radio Music is a blend of four distinct performances. Random processes were utilized to determine when each of the four was “on” (audible). Each radio is placed at a different point in the stereo field. Radio performances were sourced from local afternoon broadcasts of AM radio stations in the New York area in July 2022.
Historical realizations include a 1974 Italian recording by Gianni-Emilio Simonetti, Juan Hidalgo, and Walter Marchetti, who used Panasonic multi-band portable receivers and transposed Cage’s frequencies to the shortwave band, treating the interpretation seriously and framing it as rejecting the commodification of radio.
Radio Music exemplifies Cage’s embrace of indeterminacy and his idea of music as sounds heard in the environment. The piece highlights the role of the performer in facilitating the reception of these sounds without imposing personal intention. It reflects Cage’s broader interest in using communication media and technology to bring the sounds of the environment into the performance space, a concept also explored in works like Variations VII.
