John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960) was one of the first works to break the acousmatic tradition of electronic music by incorporating live performers. Where, in acoustic performance, gesture and sound are typically concatenated, performance with live electronics makes this link less immediate and at times inscrutable. This alienation of sound from performative gesture, described by R. Murray Schafer as “schizophonia,” creates a unique theatrical scenario (Schafer 1969). In the liner notes for the first recording of the work, Cage wrote that one of his objectives was “to make a theatrical situation involving amplifiers and loudspeakers and live musicians” (Cage 1962d). Although the work developed into one of Cage’s most flexible compositions, there are a number of restrictions in the score that limit the theatrical potential of the electronic framework.

We propose to perform a historically-informed version of Cartridge Music for four musicians with a number of modifications to Cage’s original framework. We created hand-held versions of the phono and piezo pickups which allows us to assemble a diverse array of sounding objects for producing “auxiliary sounds.” We suspended a number of these instruments, expanding the performance frame beyond the typical tabletop setting of the piece.

The results of these modifications are twofold. First, the sonic palette is significantly expanded. Along with additional “auxiliary sound” objects, freestanding contact microphones and pickups allow for creative variation in the placement and usage of the sensors which contributes a significant textural and timbral depth. Second, incorporation of the pickups as implements and extension of the performance frame unfetters the performing bodies, opening up the piece as a more dynamic theatrical vehicle. In this way, our interpretation refines Cage’s goal of creating theatricality in a live electronic environment while maintaining the integrity of the original framework.