John Cage was born September 5, 1912 in Los Angeles. He is today regarded
as one of the central figures in the music history of our century. The extent
of his influence and the far-reaching effect of his ideas is immeasurable.
In Europe his work began to be recognized during the fifties, thereby strengthening
his position in the USA considerably. Since the thirties Cage has been composing
continually for all available media. Above all, his inclusion of chance operations
for compositional decisions became famous - a procedure based on a totally
new understanding of what music is, what art is. Frequently Cage provides
no more than a framework or situation, the content of which can always be
filled anew by the musicians and which varies with every repetition. Occasionally,
however, Cage also records the results of these chance operations in precise
notation, resulting in a fixed text for the interpretation he did so for the
first time in 1951 for his Music of Changes and the Imaginairy Landscape No.4.
Since then, decisions based on chance and made with the help of the ancient
Chinese book of oracles I Ching become a central component of his working
method. Up to the present Cage has written over 150 compositions and published
several volumes of his collected writings, a majority of which can be regarded
as musical compositions.
Music of Changes
John Cage's Music of Changes consists of four parts, all of which were composed
in 1951 in New York City. They are dated at the end of each part as follows:
I, May 16, 1951 ; II, August 2, 1951 ; III, October 1 8, 1951 ; IV, December
13, 1951.
This cycle of piano music is dedicated to David Tudor and within Cage's works
clearly represents, together with the Imaginairy Landscape No.4 for twelve
radios (1951), a turning point - not, however, in the sense of a reorientation,
even less a turning back, but a radical overhaul of his compositional technique
and a fundamental renewal of his artistic self-awareness.
What caused Cage's Music of Changes to become a key work in the music of the
twentieth century is the new use of chance operations in making important
compositional decisions.
Cage starts work on the composition of Music of Changes by preparing charts
of square numbers for tempi, dynamics, sounds or rests, durations and overlapping.
Chance, which he consults by means of tossing coins (the shortened version
of the yarrow stalk oracle), decides which of the given materials are to be
combined. The result is written down in a comparatively conventional manner
according to a pattern of previously devised bars so that the sequence is
now definitely determined and the individual sound event in every parameter
occurs with the greatest possible precision. The category of chance therefore
only plays a part at the moment of composition, but not at the moment of interpretation
during the performance. The performer has to adhere strictly to a text of
almost unprecedented exactness of notation. Its origin from chance operations
is only evident in those places, where the juxtaposition of certain instructions
make it manually impossible to play. In such Cage, who is aware of the occasional
irrationallity of his notation, leaves the solution of the contradiction to
the performer. In addition to the sound material mentioned are sounds without
determined pitch, i.e. noises (slamming the lid over the keys, audible depression
of a pedal, striking below the keyboard, etc.). The distribution of these
noises is free and was undertaken spontaneously by the composer.
It is in the nature of Cage's procedures not to make any demands whatever
regarding the resulting sound, since the aim is not a predictable experience
and since the unexpected is its elixir. Thus the impressiun of chaos or anarchy
feIt by some while listening to the music of Cage says as much about this
listener's aesthetic expectation, his/her musical desires, his/her needs for
harmony, continuity and order, as it says nothing about the worth or worthlessness
of Cage's effort. At least the fact that this music helps to define our cultural
position more clearly than any theoretical discussion weighs heavily in its
estimation.