Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rod Stasick <>]

I think the common confusion arises when some
people feel that all works that use chance are aleatoric. 

Aleatoric music is not only "chance with an expensive suit on", 

but it always seems to have to have a pocket watch dangling as well.

It's my understanding that it is the element of chance embedded 

in strictly chosen confines that makes aleatoric music what it is. 

Boulez seemed to use this to, what he thought was, his advantage 

by separating his work from John's indeterminate work - 

using a kind of controlled or even constrained chance in, for instance,

the Third Piano Sonata which makes Stockhausen's

"Klavierstück XI" seem quite liberating in comparison.

Actually, I'm checking at this moment my copy of die Reihe 1 

to see if I remember Meyer-Eppler's definition. 

In the segment called "Aleatoric Modulation," it states:

"A process is said to be aleatoric if its course is determined

in general but depends on chance in detail." 

But, I don't think that it was this definition that Cage was against, 

but rather his dislike of how Boulez framed it in "Alea" where

he wrote about the "right" and "wrong" ways to use chance

...with Boulez stating that Cage's was the wrong way.

But, again, I'm going from memory and can't remember

where John had spoken about his rejection of "aleatoric."

Indeterminacy, on the other hand, is at odds with the ideas

of aleatoric music because all sounds have the potential for 

equivalent value that is lacking in aleatoric music. I think that 

even tho he didn't "invent" this either, it was an area in which 

he was certainly a groundbreaker - especially with the 

"Concerto for Piano and Orchestra."

Chance is the element of process that plays within these

two other areas.

I probably need to create a Venn Diagram of this for myself.

Rod

---

http://stasick.org

On feb 12, 2556 BE, at 11:51, David P Miller wrote:

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 André'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