Silence. John Cage

as it is,

      not as a phe-

      nomenon more

      or less approx-

      imating a

      preconception.

      ¶What’s the histo-

      ry of the chan-

      ges in my com-

      position means

      with particu-

      lar reference

      to sounds? I had

      in mind when I

      chose the sounds for

      Construction inMetal that they should be sixteen for each player. The number six- teen was also that of the num- ber of measures of four-four in each unit of the rhythmic struc- ture. In the case of the structure this number was divided four, three, two, three, four; in the case of the materi- als the gamuts of sixteen sounds were divided into four groups of four. The plan, as preconceived, was to use four of the sounds in the first sixteen measures, intro- ducing in each succeeding struc- tural unit four more until the exposi- tion involving all sixteen and lasting through the first four units was completed. The subsequent parts, three, two, three, four, were composed

      as develop-

      ment of this in-

      itial situ-

      ation. In ac-

      tuality,

      this simple plan

      was not real-

      ized, although it

      was only re-

      cently that I

      became fully

      aware that it

      was not. I had

      known all along

      that one of the

      players used three

      Japanese tem-

      ple gongs rather

      than four, but the

      fact that only

      three of these rel-

      atively rare

      instruments were

      then availa-

      ble to me, to-

      gether with the

      attachment I

      felt towards their sound,

      had convinced me

      of the rightness

      of this change in

      number. More se-

      rious, however,

      it seems to

      me now, was the

      effect of beat-

      ers: playing cow-

      bells first with rub-

      ber and then with

      metal multi-

      plied by two the

      number of sounds

      actually

      used. Sirenlike

      piano trills

      which sound as one

      were counted as

      two. Various

      other devi-

      ations from the

      original

      plan could be dis-

      covered on an-

      alysis: for

      instance, the ad-

      dition of met-

      al thundersheets

      for background noise

      bringing the num-

      ber sixteen, for

      those players who

      enjoyed it

      to seventeen.

      One might conclude

      that in compos-

      ing Constructionin Metal the organiza- tion of sounds was imperfectly realized. Or he might conclude that the compos- er had not ac- tually lis- tened to the sounds he used, ¶I have already com- pared the selec- tion of the sounds for the Sona-tas and Inter-ludes to a se- lection of shells while walking a- long a beach. They are therefore a collection ex- hibiting taste. Their number was increased by use of the unacorda, this ped- al bringing a- bout altera- tions of timbre and frequency for many of the prepared keys. In terms of pitch, how- ever, there is no change from the sounds of the Con-struction. In both cases a stat- ic gamut of sounds is present- ed, no two oc- taves repeating relations. How- ever, one could hear interest- ing differen- ces between cer- tain of these sounds. On depressing a key, sometimes a single fre- quency was heard. In other cas- es depressing a key produced an interval; in still others an aggregate of pitches and timbres. Noticing the nature of this gamut led to selecting a comparable one for the String Quartet: the

      inclusion there

      of rigidly

      scored convention-

      al harmonies

      is a matter

      of taste, from which

      a conscious con-

      trol was absent.

      Before writing

      the Music ofChanges, two piec- es were written which also used gamuts of sounds: single sounds, doub- le sounds and oth- ers more numer- ous, some to be played simultan- eously, oth- ers successiv- ely in time. These pieces were Six-teen Dances and Concerto forPrepared Pia-no and ChamberOrchestra. The elements of the gamuts were arranged unsys- tematically in charts and the method of composition involved moves on these charts anal- agous to those used in construct- ing a magic square. Charts were al- so used for the Music of Chang-es, but in con- trast to the meth- od which involved chance opera- tions, these charts were subjected to a rational control: of the sixty-four el- ements in a square chart eight times eight (made in this way in order to interpret as sounds the co- in oracle of the Chinese Book of Changes) thirty-two were sounds, thirty-two silences. The thirty-two sounds were arranged in two squares one a- bove the other, each four by four. Whether the charts were mobile or immobile, all twelve tones were pres- ent in any four elements of a given chart, whether a line of the chart was read hori- zontally or vertically. Once this dodec- aphonic re- quirement was sat- isfied, noises and repeti- tions of tones were used with freedom.

      One may conclude

      from this that in

      the Music ofChanges the ef- fect of the chance operations on the structure

      (making very

      apparent its

      anachronis-

      tic character)

      was balanced by

      a control of

      the materials.

      Charts remain in

      the Imagi-nary LandscapeNumber IV, and in the WilliamsMix, but, due to the radios of the first piece and the librar- y of record- ed sounds of the second, and for no other rea- son, no twelve-tone control was used. The question “How do we need to cautiously pro- ceed in dual- istic terms?” was not consciously answered until the Music forPiano. In that piece notes were determined by imperfections in the paper upon which the music was writ- ten. The number of imperfec- tions was deter- mined by chance.

      The origi-

      nal notation

      is in ink, and

      the actual

      steps that were tak-

      en in compo-

      sition