Cage: "Indeterminacy", Part One

John Cage, Indeterminacy (1959). In this recording Cage demonstrates his concept of chance operation. Cage reads short, humorous stories while his partner, David Tudor, makes various musical (or not) sounds in another room. The listener hears the aleatoric combination of the two.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• chance
• aleatoric
• avant
• garde
• new
• music
• 20th
• century

[stanchinsky]

NewMusicXX- Would you happen to know if the two happenings were recorded simultaneously and if cage and tudor could hear what each other were doing while it was being recorded?

[NewMusicXX]

@stanchinsky - I don't have an absolutely definitive answer, but as I understand the premise, the two participants cannot hear each other, and their parts were recorded simultaneously.

[chinesespiders]

Cage just seems to constantly amaze me

[BlueManIan]

#4 & #5 are probably my favorites.

"I was fascinated, for everything was going wrong."

[pau1more1]

Don't listen to Cage by comparing him to earlier composers who wrote different types of music. Listen to Cage by hearing all the music that came after him, and borrowed from him in some way.

[pau1more1]

This piece, like most of Cage's output after 1951, was assembled by Chance. It's easy to misunderstand Cage's music, but just know that most modern music uses chance in some way. In popular music, this might come out in automatic beat-slicing, or in pitch-correction where a computer is guessing the pitches that a singer intends (think: I Am T-Pain app). All of these things owe something to Cage, who was one of the first composers to explore chance in music.

[aeopmusic]

@zooland12

Haha... If I heard something by John Cage I reeeally liked or heard an awesome piano performance or something by him, I'd have a little more respect. For now, I totally agree w/ you.

[zooland12]

Clearly. My love of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven is ill-placed. I should rather subject my ears to a rant of poetry set against randon noises.

[HAMSLAM13]

@zooland12 idiot you know nothing about composition and poetry in motion

[ahaili]

"One of the music majors is thinking for the first time in her life." I just love that line for some reason!

[myPodTouchesYou]

The visual component was too determinate for my druthers.

[JinNOSify]

So.......can someone please explain why this is considered a masterpiece?

[zooland12]

This is TERRIBLE! Not one tiny bit of is music. He is a shame to those who appreciate true and beautiful music. Bach and Beethoven would have shrugged this man off as a joke.

[Blisscious]

He has that guy who use to perform old Hollywood horror voice, Vincent Prince...spooky, yet intriguing. Definitely a fav'!!!