305
decides not to.” Equally challenging
to musical orthodoxy were some
of American composer Morton
Feldman’s works, which sought
to redefine the act of listening by
unfolding music very slowly on a
very large scale. Some listeners
used to classical works, which
average 25 to 30 minutes, were
dismayed by his Second String
Quartet (1983), which lasts some
five hours in performance and
defies conventional development.
In music on such a scale, which
is seldom loud and never fast, and
where changes are subtle, each
sound takes on its own meaning.Graphic scores
Composers also sought to create
notation that might empower rather
than enslave the performer. In
his notation for Projections and
Intersections (1950 –1953), Feldman
allowed the players to choose
pitches and rhythms themselves.
The most important new form ofCONTEMPORARY
One of John Cage’s aleatory methods
Cage tossed
coins to arrive
at numbers that
are then fed
into the I Ching,
an ancient
Chinese system
of divination.I Ching Random numbers
were also derived
from the Chinese
tradition of sorting
and counting yarrow
sticks and then used
to consult the I Ching.Cage created a series of charts
to translate the results of his findings
into sounds (including silence),
duration, and volume.Music of Changes
In 1951, Cage was given a copy
of the I Ching by the American
composer Christian Wolff. Also
known as the Book of Changes,
this ancient Chinese text used
for divination inspired the title
of Cage’s Music of Changes
and came to inform much of
its content. Enthralled by the
concept of chance music, Cage
wrote the piece by making
charts that, when used in
conjunction with the I Ching,
generated pitches, note
durations, dynamics, tempi,
silences, and even determined
how many layers of sound
would be used. The resulting
rhythms were too complex
to notate. Cage therefore
used proportional notation, in
which the distance between
notes on the page determined
how long they were. In
addition to this, some parts
of the composition were to be
played on the piano strings
directly, and the pianist used
beaters to create percussive
sounds on the piano’s exterior.
The result was a piece for solo
piano in four books, which
posed demanding challenges
for David Tudor, Cage’s
customary pianist.Every something
is an echo
of nothing.
John Cagenotation was the graphic score.
This generally presented very few
parameters for the performers
and instead proffered a visual
provocation against which they
could create music. Some of these
were a set of visual instructions
defining the broad shape of the
music, such as Cage’s Aria (1958),
but others presented complex and
subtle imagery that bore little
relation to a performable sound.
The preeminent example of
a graphic musical score was
British composer Cornelius
Cardew’s Treatise (1963–1967), a
193-page graphic score that allows
total interpretative freedom but
expects the performers to decide
on the meaning of certain features
in the score beforehand. Indeed,
as traditions of performance began
to coalesce, graphic scores were
seldom used as inspirations for
improvisation but as a way for
performer and composer to have
equal responsibility for the work. ■US_302-305_Cage.indd 305 26/03/18 1:01 PM