Cage, John

Music Of Changes (1951)

Label: Hat [now] ART Country: Switzerland

"The title is a double pun. The score is the first that John Cage devised allowing the hexagrams of the I Ching to fully determin e how the music would procee d, event by event, gesture by gesture-the musical details (pitch, duration, dynamic s, density, tempi) being painstakingly, albeit fortuitously, derived through point-by-point con sultation from charts of possi bilities designed by the composer. (Christian Wolff, Cage's young friend and musical associate, had presented Cage with a copy of the book, which had been published by his father, Kurt Wolff. I Ching = Book of Changes = Music of Changes.) Too, the music, as an entity, is constantly changing. There is no guidin g sense of continuity of line, rhythm, speed, or textur e. The relationship between events-the glue-which holds the music together can be neither tonally nor structurally defined. Change appears to be its only un changing characteristic, its ultimate identity."-Art Lange

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