must have had in mind when he refused to allow his radio plays to be visu-
alized in any form.
In a 1997 debate of the John Cage Internet discussion group, participants
were discussing how to perform Cage’s famous “silent” piece of 1952 called
“4.33” The title refers to the four minutes and thirty-three-second length of
the performance, designed for any instrument or combination of instru-
ments, which are in fact not played during the “silent” performance. One
member, Daniel Farris, suggests:
When one records silence, one must make a number of decisions. As
when recording sound, one must decide whether or not to mic it up
close or at a distance. The purpose of close mic placement is to reduce
the amount of intrusion caused by nearby instruments and ambient
sound and not necessarily to capture the most accurate representation
of the performance. The purpose of distance mic placement is to cap-
ture the complete sonic environment both completely and accurately.
Both techniques are useful and the decision about which to use is a
subjective but important one.... Given the average Western audience’s
predisposition toward movement and respiration (and occasionally
more at a hot gig), if an audience were present, one would need to ac-
tually deploy microphones and roll tape. We could call this “the live
version.”^19Here Farris reminds us that silence is never in fact silent: to record it for radio
or audiotape therefore presents special problems. On stage or in ¤lm, “si-
lence” is represented by having some sort of visual movement (as in Beckett’s
ow n Film) during which nothing is “said.” But on radio there is no such
option, and so “silence” must be sounded as it is in Embers. The ¤nal sen-
tence in the play, “Not a sound,” thus denies its own assertion in ways that
underscore the piece’s overarching sense of emptiness. For Henry can’t even
have the silence he longs for and anticipates; there will always be another
“syllable,” but not the one he is looking for. Radio would seem to be a unique
medium to achieve this particular pathos.
Toward Hörspiel
Words and Music, written three years later, is a somewhat different experi-
ment, for here Beckett produced a radio play, a good portion of which is
given over to music—a music to be written by a collaborator. For its ¤rst
BBC production in 1962, the musical score was written by Beckett’s cousin,
Acoustic Art in Beckett’s Radio Plays 119