Indeterminacy in music
Indeterminacy in music, which began early in the 20th century in the music of Charles Ives, and was continued in the 1930s by Henry Cowell and carried on by his student, the experimental music composer John Cage beginning in 1951 (Griffiths 2001), came to refer to the (mostly American) movement which grew up around Cage. This group included the other members of the so-called New York School: Earle Brown, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff. Others working in this way included the Scratch Orchestra in the United Kingdom (1968 until the early 1970s) and the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi (born 1933). Indeterminate music can be divided into three groups.The the John Cage's Music of Changes (1951) is an example that the composer selected duration, tempo, and dynamics by using the I-Ching.
(An excerpt from Book IV of Music of Changes in Cage's calligraphic score. )It doesn't sound like a melody and no rhythm though. ( Listen:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOwcpjr9wFA&list=PLF8C330ADF440AFB5 )
Electroacoustic music:
Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during the modern era[citation needed] following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the ORTF in Paris. One example of John Cage is Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_Landscape )
Non-standard use of musical instruments
He used many objects which don't belong to muscic instruments. In his muscic, there are many sounds from household items such as metal sheet. This is inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound."
Indeterminacy in music is represented by three main tendencies; chance music, aleatory music, and stochastic music. John Cage dealt with both chance and aleatory music. The two could often coexist in one piece. Chance music is created when the composer uses a chance procedure during the writing of the music. However the music turned out is how it would be performed from then on out. Aleatory music is created when the performer makes individual decisions that could effect the entire form of the piece.
回复删除For more information on all three kinds of indeterminacy in music visit: http://ems.music.illinois.edu/courses/tipei/M202/Notes/cage1.html
In fact, most Eastern philosophies revolve around the fundamental notion of E = mc^2, or that every single thing is the result of the energy produced by the vibrations of the molecules within. Vibrations within a certain frequency interval is sound, and sound is nothing other than vibrations at different frequencies within that interval. In this sense, colors, textures, objects, tastes, smells, places, people, and even ideas to some extent are sounds waiting to happen! This blows my mind. Even thoughts are potential sounds (ref mantras). Cage understood this either intellectually or intuitively, I can’t tell which.
回复删除Both Jianjian and Jillian’s comments are fleshing out my understanding of indeterminancy: it applies to different levels of the piece as well as different qualities. Cage died in 1992, right before the explosion of the personal computer and World Wide Web. If he had access to those, he would have been the face of today’s computer music. Computers to bathtubs, wow. No wonder he didn’t have standard notation:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Figure4.jpg