It is possible (and even perhaps desirable) to play the piece on more than one piano. There are no restrictions as to synchrony and unexpected torrents of sound coming from different directions is very much part of the piece. The work belongs to a body of works linked by an interest in indeterminacy. Here the focus is indeterminacy of material means. Cage is deliberately imprecise in the instrumental force he writes for. It is composed of 20 loose pages that are not bound together. The pages can therefore be performed in any order. Cage had not allowed this in previous pieces for the instrument. These 20 pages must be performed in part or in their entirety, by one pianist or by 2 to 20 pianists. There is no reason why one pianist cannot pre-record one part. It is also possible to perform the work simultaneously with another work of Cage's namely the 'Atlas Eclipticalis' (1961-62) for orchestra.

In his book 'Silence' Cage recounts: " We've played 'Winter Music' quite a number of times now: I haven't kept count. When we first played it the silences seemed very long and the sounds seemed really separated in space, not obstructing one another. In Stockholm, however, when we played it at the opera as an interlude in the dance programme given by Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown early one October, I noticed that it had become melodic."

Another factor exists however, which transforms a work-process into a work-object as Cage says: " It does not matter which one of my indeterminate pieces you choose: once recorded it becomes an object, when you listen to it knowing that you can listen to it again. Listen again, and the object appears: there is repetition, it always sounds the same. In civilisation today, where everything is standardised, where everything repeats itself, the basic problem is that of forgetting an object has duplicates"

© N. B. 2001