Silence. John Cage

nonetheless

      profoundly, al-

      ter the inten-

      tion (even though

      it was only

      the carrying out

      of an action

      indicated

      by chance oper-

      ations). Some of

      these circumstan-

      ces are the ef-

      fects of weather

      upon the ma-

      terial; others

      follow from hu-

      man frailty—

      the inabil-

      ity to read

      a ruler and

      make a cut at

      a given point—

      still others are

      due to mechan-

      ical causes,

      eight machines not

      running at pre-

      cisely the same

      speed. ¶Given these

      circumstances,

      one might be in-

      spired towards greater

      heights of dura-

      tion control or

      he might renounce

      the need to con-

      trol durations

      at all. In Mu-sic for Pia-no I took the latter course. Struc- ture no longer being present, that piece took place in any length of time whatso- ever, accord- ing to the ex- igencies of an occasion. The duration of single sounds was therefore al- so left inde- terminate. The notation took the form of whole notes in space, the space suggesting but not measur- ing time. Noises were crotchets with- out stems. ¶When a performance of Music for Pi-ano involves more than one pi- anist, as it may from two to twenty, the suc- cession of sounds becomes complete- ly indeter- minate. Though each page is read from left to right con- ventionally, the combina- tion is unpre- dictable in terms of succes- sion. ¶The histo- ry of changes with reference to timbre is short. In the Construc-tion in Metal four sounds had a single timbre; while the prepared pi- ano of the Sonatas andInterludes pro- vided by its nature a klang-farbenmelo-die. This inter- est in changing timbres is evi- dent in the StringQuartet. But this matter of tim- bre, which is large- ly a question of taste, was first radically changed for me in the Imagi-nary LandscapeNumber IV. I had, I confess, never enjoyed the sound of ra- dios. This piece opened my ears

      to them, and was

      essentially

      a giving up

      of personal

      taste about timbre.

      I now frequent-

      ly compose with

      the radio

      turned on, and my

      friends are no long-

      er embarrassed

      when visiting

      them I inter-

      rupt their recep-

      tions. Several

      other kinds of

      sound have been dis-

      tasteful to me:

      the works of Bee-

      thoven, Ital-

      ian bel can-to, jazz, and the vibraphone. I used Beethoven in the WilliamsMix, jazz in the Imaginar-y Landscape Num-ber V, bel can-to in the re- cent part for voice in the Concertfor Pianoand Orchestra. It remains for me to come to terms with the vib- raphone. In oth- er words, I find my taste for timbre

      lacking in ne-

      cessity, and

      I discover

      that in the pro-

      portion I give

      it up, I find

      I hear more and

      more accurate-

      ly. Beethoven

      now is a sur-

      prise, as accept-

      able to the

      ear as a cow-

      bell. What are the

      orchestral timbres

      of the Concertfor Pianoand Orchestra? It is impos- sible to pre- dict, but this may be said: they in- vite the timbres of jazz, which more than serious music has explored the possibili- ties of instru- ments. ¶With tape and music-synthe- sizers, action with the over- tone structure of sounds can be less a matter of taste and more thor- oughly an ac- tion in a field of possibil- ities. The no- tation I have described for Var-iations deals with it as such. ¶The early works have beginnings, middles, and end- ings. The later ones do not. They begin any- where, last any length of time, and involve more or fewer instru- ments and players. They are therefore not preconceived objects, and to approach them as objects is to utterly miss

      the point. They are

      occasions for

      experience,

      and this exper-

      ience is not

      only received

      by the ears but

      by the eyes too.

      An ear alone

      is not a be-

      ing. I have no-

      ticed listening

      to a record

      that my attention

      moves to a

      moving object

      or a play of

      light, and at a

      rehearsal of

      the Williams Mix last May when all eight machines were in opera- tion the atten- tion of those pres- ent was engaged by a sixty- year-old pian- o tuner who was busy tun- ing the instru- ment for the eve- ning’s concert. It becomes evi- dent that music itself is an ideal sit- uation, not a real one. The mind may be used either to ig- nore ambient sounds, pitches oth- er than the eight- y-eight, dura- tions which are not counted, timbres which are unmusi- cal or distaste- ful, and in gen- eral to con- trol and under- stand an avail- able exper- ience. Or the mind may give up its desire to improve on cre- ation and func- tion as a faith- ful receiver of experi- ence. ¶I have not yet told any stories and yet when I give a talk I gener- ally do. The subject certain- ly suggests my telling something irrelevant

      but my inclin-

      ation is to

      tell something apt.

      That reminds me:

      Several years

      ago I was

      present at a

      lecture given

      by Dr. Dai-

      setz Teitaro

      Suzuki. He

      spoke quietly

      when he spoke. Some-

      times, as I was

      telling a friend

      yesterday eve-

      ning, an airplane

      would pass over-

      head. The lecture

      was at Colum-

      bia Uni-

      versity and

      the campus is

      directly in

      line with