Marc G. Jensen. (2009) John Cage, chance operations, and the chaos game: age and the I ching. The Musical Times Summer 2009 Vol 150 No 1907. Ed. Antony Bye. Herts: The Musical Times Publications Ltd. pp. 97-102.
p. 97
Chance operations played a carefully controlled role within John Cage's compositional process, but the use of chance still remains a controversial aspect of his work that many simply fail to understand, seeing it primarily as an abdication of composerly control. In part, this scepticism may result from Cage's justification of using chance operations through reference to Chinese philosophy while not fully embracing that philosophy in other aspects of his life. In his work, Cage's mingled appropriation of Asian philosophies ranged freely from Coomaraswamy to Zen, while he failed to comprehensively embrace or utilise any one system of belief in an orthodox sense. Cage's applications of Asian philosophy - particularly the idea of chance operations and the I ching - were clearly filtered through the lens of Western thought. From quantum indeterminacy to chaos theory, the interplay of chance and order also played an extremely important role in Western science and mathematics, providing new modes of understanding the universe. With this perspective, and the Cagean idea that the role of art is the 'imitation of nature in her mode of operation', this article will explore how the mechanics of chance operations actually function in Cage's work, first by examining his use of the I ching, and then comparing his use of chance with apparently similar ideas from chaos theory.
p. 98
The primary tool that Cage utilised to derive chance relationships was the Chinese oracular book the I ching, or Book of changes. The title of the Music of changes of course makes reference to this, and it is generally accepted in Cage scholarship that his appropriation of the I Ching is based on a sincere, thorough modelling of the book's philosophy at some level. However, a closer examination of the I ching - particularly in the edition available to Cage in 1951 - calls this into question, and Cage's compositional technique in the Music of changes and subsequent chance-derived works appears to be as closely associated with serialism as it is with Chinese philosophy.
p. 99
Could Cage's use of the I Ching be seen primarily as a new way to utilise an extant approach to customisation (serialism), a serendipitous opportunity for extending and adding greater depth to his previous work? Although his use of chance operations was rooted - in name - in Chinese philosophy, it is more realistic to approach it as a Westernised adaptation of this system, seen through the lens of Schoenberg's system of organising compositional materials serially.
p. 100
An analogue to chaos?
Among the interpretations of Cage's work with the I ching, perhaps the most intriguing is the idea that this is an artistic expression of chaos theory at some level.
p. 102
In composing the Music of Changes, Cage cast and plotted each new hexagram without reference to the results of the previous one. Because of this, each event is a totally isolated representation of the system's properties. Except for the fact that the hexagrams which become mobile are permanently changed when they are used, the Music of changes is not based upon any kind of rigorous feedback system. In addition to this, Cage freely composed new chart components to replace mobile hexagrams, with no systematic relationship between the old and new material. In other words, Cage's random input never gets iterated self-referentially, so it really results in randomised output, expressing chaotic order only at whatever holistic level the I ching Does.
The I ching is reputed to reproduce the tendencies of the universe, which is an embrace of randomness that conceals a hidden order resonating only at a universal level. As CG Jung wrote in his foreword to the I ching, 'The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetial reasons that seemingly account for the coincidence.' It is romantic to think of Cage's chance operations as a music of chaos, but it in fact represents something different. Understanding this distinction is important for approaching Cage's relationship to randomness on its own terms. The idea of a chaotic attractor implies an order that supersedes linearity by constantly referring back to itself, not just a structure that is non-linear. In the chaos game, repeated iterations gradually define order within boundaries. Like a river in a channel, its direction of flow was a whole becomes quickly clear, and its randomness is bounded by its tendency in motion.
I can't really let go of this article since a lot of the writing dose summarise what I felt with Cage's compositional techniques. In a way, I am also amazed that how the author managed to put his thoughts and comments together in such a clear, sharp but diplomatic style. The writing articulates the author's exquisite arguments and expresses complicate debate with concise statements. It would be my wish to be able to write with such variety of phrases. Too much to learn!
Despite the English writing, I do share a lot of observations with the author on Cage's appropriation of I ching and how the techniques derived more from serialism than Chinese philosophy.
The other argument is concerning chaos theory. Since I am neither a specialist in Cage scholarship nor am I a mathematician, this view fascinates me. Nevertheless, Cage's notion in chance music fundamentally differs from chaos theory. As it sated in the writing, chaos does still form a pattern, furthermore, in Music of Change there is no rigorous feedback system.*
It appears to me that Cage's intention is to release certain degree of control over composing process, this probably is under the influence of his understanding of Chinese philosophy. Later when he introduce the idea of chance which released a even larger window. It might appears rather different whilst the performance is taking place, but how much difference conceptually from the composer's aspect?
* for people who is interested in finding out more about Chaos Theory, here are some links:
http://www-chaos.umd.edu/ by University of Maryland
http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/ by Boston University
http://library.thinkquest.org/2647/chaos/chaos.htm by Oracle Think Quest Education Foundation.
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