Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Bill Trigg <>]

I agree with Petr about the embarrassing Cage performances when musicians believe that it makes no difference what they do.  The important phrase in his post, IMHO, is "to a degree".  The beauty of Cage's music for me, is that exactly what will happen changes from performance to performance, perhaps more than with other composers, due to the parameters that are determined by chance and by the performers.  This is certainly not "right" or "wrong" (and another misconception is that nothing was "wrong" to John).  It is certainly wrong to disregard his instructions!  It is also not "better" or "worse" (adjectives that I don't think John would have used for performances).  Most informed performances of Cage's music are not "chance" or "indeterminate".  They simply contain elements that are determined by chance operations.  The dictionary definition of "aleatoric" music is when some elements are left up to chance.  So the discussion of the difference between "chance", "indeterminacy", and "aleatory" seems to be how different musicians have interpreted those terms.

Bill Trigg

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Petr Kotik <> wrote:

You are wrong, Cage new (to a degree) what will happen when he composed a piece of music (as any other composer, from the past of present). Most of the time, it worked out, and when it didn’t, he scraped everything and stared again. You should not get mixed up with Cages remark “I welcome what happens next”
The embarrassing moments I so often encounter with performances of Cage occur when the musicians believe that, because of chance operations, it makes no difference what they do.
PK


On 2/12/13 6:43 PM, "Charles Turner" <> wrote:

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:

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