Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Sara Haefeli <>]

Hi Paul,

There is a slight connection to dice with the piece HPSCHD.  The structure of the harpsichord parts and some of the musical materials are taken from a musical dice game attributed (wrongly) to Mozart.  By rolling dice one can assemble a minuet from a number of different measures of music.  I believe that this was a fairly popular parlor game in the 18th century.  (Sounds fun to me!)  But Cage used the I Ching as the selection device, not dice, and as you noted in the quote from Laura Kuhn, Cage and Hiller created a computer program to replicate the I Ching at the University of Illinois.  It was not, however, a "random number generator."  If you want to know more about the mathematical tendencies of the I Ching, you can read Hiller's article "Programming the I-Ching oracle." Computer Studies in the Humanities and Verbal Behavior 3 (1970): 130-43.  Cage kept pages and pages of this printout from the I Ching program because he believed that it was a huge time saving device, as I'm sure it was.  But it seems that it created patterns.

Thanks for the question!

Best wishes,

Sara

 

Sara Haefeli, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor 

School of Music
Whalen Center for Music 2306

 

Ithaca College
953 Danby Rd.  |  Ithaca, NY 14850

(607) 274-1629
 |  ithaca.edu/music

On May 22, 2014, at 11:42 AM, Paul Norman wrote:

Dear subscribers to the silence list,

Did John Cage ever write a piece which utilised the physical rolling of dice?

As part of my research as a composer I have been looking for a piece by John Cage which was composed or performed by utilising the physical rolling of dice. I’m sure that I am not alone in feeling like there is at least one piece. Throughout my classical education I have been introduced to chance music at various times always with a relationship to John Cage and to the rolling of dice. 

(Introductions similar to this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwD7ildTQSw)

However, following my research it seams as though John Cage in fact never wrote a piece which utilised dice. Perhaps (as above) this misassumption comes from explaining the compositional process of John Cage by using dice as a simple example of aleatoric composition, or perhaps it is influenced by the origin and definition of the word “aleatoric”? (see below):

aleatory

ˈeɪlɪət(ə)ri,ˈal-/

adjective

adjective: aleatoric

depending on the throw of a dice or on chance; random.

▪ relating to or denoting music or other forms of art involving elements of random choice (sometimes using statistical or computer techniques) during their composition, production, or performance."aleatory music"

Origin: late 17th century: from Latin aleatorius, from aleator ‘dice player’, from alea ‘die’, + -y¹.

Further the following insights from Laura Kuhn of the John Cage Trust seams to further confirm this thinking: 

“However, as I continued writing Empty Words, it seemed to me that repetitions were creeping into my text, and that the only way they cd be doing that wd be if they existed in the printout to begin with.  I then went back and fd that the printout indeed repeated itself, so that all my work since 1969, since all of it one way or another used the I Ching (not just music but my writing too), beginning with Cheap Imitation, was not what it wd have been had I been tossing pennies manually (as I did from ’51 or thereabouts until I went to the U of I).

The reference to "until I went to the U of I" refers, of course, to his time at the University of Illinois, where he worked with Lejaren Hiller (and Ed Kobrin) and began using the first random number generator created for the FORTRAN computer they were using for the composition of HPSCHD.

This isn't, of course, definitive, but it's telling. I doubt his use of dice for his purposes because they are inherently biased, at least in pairs (probability, using a pair, of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 being far greater than rolling a 2, 3, 4, 11, or 12 -- 1 being impossible).”

I am hopeful that the subscribers to the Silence list will be able to shed some light on this research question and help lead me towards a definitive answer.

Regards

Paul Norman (MMus)

Paul Norman: Composer - Guitarist

http://www.paulnormanmusic.com