Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[David P Miller <>]

Hello Rod and everyone -

I usually think of "chance" in the context of Cage's work as having 
primarily to do with method - compositional method, or method by which one 
realizes a score for performance. "Indeterminacy," again in this context, 
relates to the extent to which a performance is tightly bound to the 
notation. For example, Cheap Imitation was composed using chance 
operations, but the score is far from indeterminate. Variations VIII, by 
contrast, is one of Cage's scores -most- "indeterminate of performance," 
but the actual writing of the score arguably involved no chance 
operations. (To pick on one of the most obscure examples available.)

I haven't really looked into "aleatoric," but it's always seemed a little 
like "chance" with an expensive suit on.

Best wishes,

David

On Tue, 12 Feb 2013, Rod Stasick wrote:

> Hello Silencers,
>
> Hope everyone is staying warm and not having
> to deal with too much snow and cold.
>
> I wanted to mention that I'm having an interesting...
> ummmm...discussion with a guy online who has some
> misguided ideas about Cage's ideas and work:
>
> Ideas like:
>
> ? Cage was known for his use of "mathematical equations
> to create his music..." and then sites Joan's book "Musicage..."
> as proof and tells me I need to read that...
> (Yeah, and Ravi Shankar was known for his dancing.)
>
> ? "Cage 'invented' aleatoric music"
> then when challenged says that he was the first to do so on record...
> (out of curiosity, I wanted to check online which recording,
> with year, was the first one released of John's music, but couldn't
> find Andr?'s list {the site is down} and couldn't figure out how to
> find this bit of information using the "Complete Works" page
> at johncage.org. I must be aging faster than I realize - ha!
> Does anyone know what the first release actually was?
>
> but anyway,
>
> as a result of this, I'm discovering a kind of blurring
> of the definitions of these three ideas:
>
> ? Aleatoric music
> ? Indeterminacy
> ? Chance
>
> What I've long thought of as separate ideas
> seems to be often thrown together (just recently?)
> as all the same - all three supposedly having the same meaning
> which, to me, has clearly never been the case.
> I know that John disliked the term "aleatoric"
> but my aging mind needs refreshing as to where I've actually read this.
> Yes, there's Meyer-Eppler's Darmstadt introduction
> of the process...and Boulez took to popularizing it,
> but it would be nice to visit's John's words.
>
> Anyway, I'm wondering if any of you have your own
> comments about these three ideas and their interrelation.
>
> thanks,
>
> Rod