Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[William Brooks <>]

My sense is that abandoning self-_expression_ was not sufficient; the abandonment, the compositional act, had to be done in a disciplined manner. (Discipline, for me, is the key Cage’s practice—not chance, self-abnegation, or anything else.) Cage found in the I Ching a disciplined way of working, not unlike how, at a later date, he found in macrobiotics a disciplined way of eating. In both cases, to shop around for an alternative misses the point—indeed, arguably, destroys the point.

However, I really don’t know much . . . about anything, and certainly not about John Cage. Which is a pleasure! 

Bill 

William Brooks

Emeritus Professor of Music
University of York
Heslington, York YO10 5DD
United Kingdom 

Email is not a secure method of communication. Be careful what you write. 

On Mar 27, 2022, at 20:52, Rod Stasick <> wrote:

But I thought the idea was that, both, the self-alteration and the

reduction of self-_expression_ were accomplished using chance or 

randomization methods? Why then straight-jacket it by devoting 

oneself to the number “64”? Useful, yes, for I-Ching divination but

unnecessarily convoluted if you are looking at the alterations and 

reductions we mentioned earlier that could come from any other

easier (and instantaneous) process of creating surprising results.

R

On Mar 27, 2022, at 15:46, Andrew Culver <> wrote:

Rod

For John (and for me) it was never about “randomness”, as a product (or product modifier). It is about self-alteration. 

Also for John (same but less so for me) it was about reducing self-_expression_.

What was needed, then, was a suitable method. The I Ching with its 64 possibilities came along at the right time, offering a consistent and useable process. I see this more as a practicality—with pleasurable bonuses—than as a devotion.

You are correct that the change to the computer didn’t change the process fundamentally (it did add some variations). What it did alter was the speed and scale, a lot. Which is one reason why his work beginning in 1984 is a distinct period, in my opinion.

AC

On Mar 27, 2022, at 13:04, Rod Stasick <> wrote:

The big poisonous elephant mushroom in the rheum that’s often overlooked tho

is that Cage seemed more devoted to the I-Ching and the number 64 than to the

ideas of pure chance in the most basic way of procedures. Yes, he made the jump

from coin tossing to computer printouts (making his work faster, but taking away

the delightful immediacy of results), but any element outside of “64” and I-Ching

was dismissed. For me tho, the change from a pseudo-random number algorithm 

to a maximally unpredictable (as well as flexible) way of creating randomness was

an immense game-changer in my approach to the randomization of all elements.

R

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