Aleatoric Music - John Cage and The Random in Music
July 14th 2006 07:04
It is well known that it is impossible for a composer to specify every condition of the sound of their compositions. The tone of instrumentalists varies greatly between players, players may choose their own embellishments and cadenzas, and no two performances can ever be exactly the same. Even in electronic music, where all sounds can be controlled on a recording, playback will vary depending on the acoustics and sound system where the music is played. Some composers over the years have taken influence from this principle - that so much of music is uncontrolled - and expanded it to make compositions where sections of material can depend on entirely random factors.
Probably the most well known exponent of this style is John Cage(1912 - 1992). While his early works don’t hint at the styles he was to pursue later, by the 1950s he was producing works which were composed by aleatoric methods, some of which had factors of their performances decided by chance.
In his ‘Music of Changes’ for piano, written in 1951, compositional features were decided by the flipping of coins, deriving chance operations from the ‘I Ching’, the Chinese book of changes. In ‘Music for Piano’, written 1952 - 56, Cage places notes on imperfections in the manuscript paper, and in ‘Atlas Eclipticalis’, written 1961 - 62 uses the shapes of the constellations as influence for musical material. With these works, John Cage changed the nature of music and composition by removing the necessity of intention from composition. Many of the other composers from the 20th century may have used seemingly random sounds in composition, but it was rarely for the point of randomness itself. This type of composition shook the world of contemporary music. Many traditionalists were disgusted by this type of writing, and many would claim that Cage’s music wasn’t music at all(at least in the traditional sense).
In addition to using methods in composition that were random, Cage also allowed randomness to pervade in performances of his works. 4’33’’, written in 1952, the most well known of these works, is a piece where the performer only sits at a piano and does not play, deciding only when to change between the three movements of the work. This was inspired by Cage’s visit to Harvard’s anechoic chamber, a room designed to eliminate all sound. In this room Cage was surprised to discover he could still hear the flowing of blood from his heart and the ‘whistling’ of his nervous system. Performance of this work creates a very personal experience to whoever hears it - the ambient noise surrounding it’s performance will always be different, unique and fascinating. Other works where great amounts of randomness were involved in the performance included ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 4’ from 1951, where the performance content depended entirely on what radios picked up in the area, and ‘Winter Music’ from 1957, where any from one to twenty pianists may use any amount of the chance composed score. In some of this, we can see something of an ideology in Cage given by a quote from 1961 - ‘It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one’. This demonstrates how he enjoyed performers not reproducing works as they were written but in each performance making a unique and different piece of music from Cage’s plans.
Cage has succeeded in stimulating discussion regarding the definition of music. A common question which has still not been firmly answered is that if music does not need to have intention, can be composed of entirely non humanly created elements and does not need to even require any direct human involvement, what then is music? Over half a century on from these groundbreaking compositions, this is still a difficult question to definitively answer.
Probably the most well known exponent of this style is John Cage(1912 - 1992). While his early works don’t hint at the styles he was to pursue later, by the 1950s he was producing works which were composed by aleatoric methods, some of which had factors of their performances decided by chance.
John Cage later in his life
In addition to using methods in composition that were random, Cage also allowed randomness to pervade in performances of his works. 4’33’’, written in 1952, the most well known of these works, is a piece where the performer only sits at a piano and does not play, deciding only when to change between the three movements of the work. This was inspired by Cage’s visit to Harvard’s anechoic chamber, a room designed to eliminate all sound. In this room Cage was surprised to discover he could still hear the flowing of blood from his heart and the ‘whistling’ of his nervous system. Performance of this work creates a very personal experience to whoever hears it - the ambient noise surrounding it’s performance will always be different, unique and fascinating. Other works where great amounts of randomness were involved in the performance included ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 4’ from 1951, where the performance content depended entirely on what radios picked up in the area, and ‘Winter Music’ from 1957, where any from one to twenty pianists may use any amount of the chance composed score. In some of this, we can see something of an ideology in Cage given by a quote from 1961 - ‘It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one’. This demonstrates how he enjoyed performers not reproducing works as they were written but in each performance making a unique and different piece of music from Cage’s plans.
Cage has succeeded in stimulating discussion regarding the definition of music. A common question which has still not been firmly answered is that if music does not need to have intention, can be composed of entirely non humanly created elements and does not need to even require any direct human involvement, what then is music? Over half a century on from these groundbreaking compositions, this is still a difficult question to definitively answer.
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Comment by L.
If you thought music should be the something the merges form and content, then any music without intended content, or did not evoke an emotional response would sit lower on the musical ladder. But if music's purpose was simply to entertain, fit comfortably into the musical art world, use certain types of instruments and so on Cage wouldn't be taken seriously.
Comment by Peter