Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Andrew Culver <>]

Hello Silence Listers.

John Cage was on a project, to free himself from his likes and dislikes. 
Simultaneously, he felt obliged to maintain a commitment to composing music. 
It is not hard to understand the potential conflict between these two paths. 
His solution was the use of I Ching chance operations while composing.

If you try to see it from this perspective, it is a simple matter to 
understand what chance meant to him.

From the listener's perspective, things get confused, as demonstrated by this 
discussion.

As for performers, I need to get personal. I have composed a lot of music 
using chance operations, and I find it shifts the experience from one of 
self-expression to one of self-alteration. (John, incidentally, employed like 
words in this regard.)  

When guiding performers, I have found it useful to invite this same 
experience: rather than express yourself, just play and listen to the work as 
written and unwritten, and in time you will notice the change that you are 
producing in yourself. 

Then you are there; and there is not a state, it is a never-ending process.

Now, going back to the listener's perspective, if the essential qualities of 
a correct performance come from a process of active and continual change in 
the performers, the music cannot be fixed, will never be repeated, and it is 
incorrect to attempt to bind it to a definition that focuses on the result. 

We could, of course, rely on a definition that puts this self-altering 
process at the centre. Why don't we call it change music?

Andrew Culver