Water Walk was composed in 1959 and premiered on “Lascia o Raddoppia,” a TV program televised in Milan, on Feb 5, 1959. Subsequently it was performed on “I’ve Got a Secret,” the popular American game show, on Feb 24, 1960.
The piece was constructed for a television performance involving a large number of properties and a special single-track tape. In one of his manuscripts, Cage indicated a subtitle for Water Walk as “Water Music No. 2″. It was composed for the Italian TV quiz “Lascia O Raddoppia”. In the piece, Cage used 34 materials. It ran for 3 minutes.
The materials required are mostly related to water, i.e. a bath tub, a toy fish, a pressure cooker, ice cubes (and an electric mixer to crush them), rubber duck, etc., but Cage also called for a grand piano and 5 radios. The score consists of a list of properties, a floor plan showing the placements of instruments and objects, three pages with a timeline (one minute each) with descriptions and pictographic notations of occurrence of events, and a list of notes “regarding some of the actions to be made in the order of occurrence.”
Timings are not accurate: “Start watch and then time actions as closely as possible to their appearance in the score”.