Chance music is one of the new 20th century’s music genres which is composed by undetermined method. That means that composers intentionally compose music without any determined method. The composers probably want to create the pure and natural sound or to find the beauty of randomness.
John Cage devised a revolutionary ideas for chance music, the I Ching. I Ching is the ancient Chinese text used in Western Zhou period in about 1000 B.C. The general idea for I Ching is that a letter, which also has its own meaning in Chinese, is determined by using various combination of long and short lines. The lines create various hexagrams (64 combinations) which indicate a certain letter. The real process is more complicated but this is the general idea. John Cage composed Music for Changes by using the hexagrams. First, he made the charts for sounds (32 sounds and 32 silent squares), durations (64 rhythm patterns and note values from 32nd to whole note), dynamics (16 dynamic markings and 48 blank squares for keeping the previous dynamic), tempo, and densities (1 to 8 layers) by using the I Ching. Then, he tossed a coin and choose which note (dynamic, tempo, density, etc.) should be added on the score.
Literally, everything was randomly composed! However, surprisingly the sound is actually not bad. It sounds mysterious, bizarre but interesting. The silence between notes, random chords, and random dynamics sound like they were carefully composed. According to Kenneth Silverman, Cage tried to find the ideal of non-mythic listening and seeing, of perceptual innocence. In other word, he wanted to create the pure beauty of music.
I thought that chance music is not a fair way to compose a music. However, now I strongly believe that Cage’s chance music was worth to be composed. I appreciate to be able to experience this magical music. I personally think the music is pretty relaxing because of the space and the randomly created chords sound so fascinating. You can also find his another chance music, Atlas Eclipticalis from my previous post. Here’s the link and below is the Music for Changes.
