Radio Music's End?

2012 marks the centenary of John Cage's birth and the twentieth anniversary of his death (Los Angeles, September 5, 1912 – New York, August 12, 1992). Obviously, there are many celebrations. Presumably, almost all of his work will be performed this year, and some are even noticing a few problems.

Peter Urpeth, on his blog silentmoviemusic, pointed out that one of Cage's most famous and distinctive pieces, Radio Music, composed in 1956, will likely become unperformable starting in 2017, and perhaps the same will happen to Imaginary Landscape 4 (and some other radio-based pieces). These pieces, in fact, are written for a certain number of performers (from 1 to 8 for the first, 12 for the second), each equipped with a radio. The score of Radio Music includes a list of frequencies to which the devices must be tuned during the piece. The list is independent of the location and time of the performance, resulting in an indeterminate set of sounds. Occasionally, there is no transmission on some frequencies, and therefore the silence of the radio is heard, consisting of static with some random interference.

The fact that endangers Radio Music is the shutdown of the analog signal planned for 2017, marking the definitive transition to digital broadcasts. There are two consequences:

Digital static is definitively silent, and interference is very rare, if any, but, even worse,
In digital radio, there are no frequencies, only channels, so it's impossible to tune to a given frequency. While it's true that each transponder operates on its own frequency, this has nothing to do with the old analog frequencies, and each transponder corresponds to a block of channels, not a single broadcast.

The score, therefore, appears obsolete in the face of a recent technological leap. This is not the first time this has happened in the history of music. I'm thinking, for example, of the transition from the Baroque to the modern bow, or from the harpsichord to the piano. However, in these cases, the essence of the musical discourse—that is, the succession of pitches—remained and allowed for a new interpretation.

Then there are other cases linked to a technological leap. In electronic music, the transition from analog to digital has thrown various scores into crisis. However, with digital, 99% of what was done analog can be emulated, albeit with some differences, but these, ultimately, are small compared to those caused by abandoning the harpsichord in favor of the piano.

In this case, however, it is the very substance of the piece that changes, and if its meaning, which consists in the random overlapping of various radio sources, can be reproduced, both a series of noises (static, interference, tuning) and that mix of normal and service transmissions (transport systems, emergencies, CB) that once worked with the same medium, but are now definitively separated, are missing.

I don't think, however, that Cage would have been too concerned about the end of Radio Music; indeed, he would have welcomed it as another step towards silence, but digital silence is too much. perfect…

In the image, David Tudor and John Cage (click to enlarge), found via johncage.org.

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