Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Charles Turner <>]

Title: Re: [silence] Re: Re: Aleatoric • Indeterminacy • Chance

Indeterminacy seems to me to mean "leaving elements of the composition unspecified".  So PK is right, of course, but Cage and others embraced this "not knowing what will happen" to a much greater degree, and they needed a name for what they were doing, because you can't be taken seriously without a new name or theory (I'm sorry to say).

I think "aleatoric" sprang from the need for the Europeans to have their own fancy name, and to use Cage's word would have made them look weak.  Competitive pressure, in other words.

I think Boulez wanted chance as another element under his control; Cage wanted to see what happened when things were out of his control. 

It's interesting that "aleatoric" is from the Latin, so it has connotations of ancient-ness and literary culture, while "indeterminacy" sounds scientific.

On Feb 12, 2013, at 4:13 PM, S.E.M. Ensemble wrote:

What is chance/aleatoric music? I don’t seem to know what it is. Composition based on chance, that I know – but chance-aleatoric music? Unless we recognize that all music is chance/aleatoric – Chopin, Mozart, Schoenberg, Cage. Its all the same as far as indeterminacy of elements, except that these elements are different for every one of these composers. When you understand it, Cage becomes as fixed/unfixed as Mozart.
PK