nonetheless
profoundly, al-
ter the inten-
tion (even though
it was only
the carrying out
of an action
indicated
by chance oper-
ations). Some of
these circumstan-
ces are the ef-
fects of weather
upon the ma-
terial; others
follow from hu-
man frailty—
the inabil-
ity to read
a ruler and
make a cut at
a given point—
still others are
due to mechan-
ical causes,
eight machines not
running at pre-
cisely the same
speed. ¶Given these
circumstances,
one might be in-
spired towards greater
heights of dura-
tion control or
he might renounce
the need to con-
trol durations
at all. In Mu-sic for Pia-no I took the latter course. Struc- ture no longer being present, that piece took place in any length of time whatso- ever, accord- ing to the ex- igencies of an occasion. The duration of single sounds was therefore al- so left inde- terminate. The notation took the form of whole notes in space, the space suggesting but not measur- ing time. Noises were crotchets with- out stems. ¶When a performance of Music for Pi-ano involves more than one pi- anist, as it may from two to twenty, the suc- cession of sounds becomes complete- ly indeter- minate. Though each page is read from left to right con- ventionally, the combina- tion is unpre- dictable in terms of succes- sion. ¶The histo- ry of changes with reference to timbre is short. In the Construc-tion in Metal four sounds had a single timbre; while the prepared pi- ano of the Sonatas andInterludes pro- vided by its nature a klang-farbenmelo-die. This inter- est in changing timbres is evi- dent in the StringQuartet. But this matter of tim- bre, which is large- ly a question of taste, was first radically changed for me in the Imagi-nary LandscapeNumber IV. I had, I confess, never enjoyed the sound of ra- dios. This piece opened my ears
to them, and was
essentially
a giving up
of personal
taste about timbre.
I now frequent-
ly compose with
the radio
turned on, and my
friends are no long-
er embarrassed
when visiting
them I inter-
rupt their recep-
tions. Several
other kinds of
sound have been dis-
tasteful to me:
the works of Bee-
thoven, Ital-
ian bel can-to, jazz, and the vibraphone. I used Beethoven in the WilliamsMix, jazz in the Imaginar-y Landscape Num-ber V, bel can-to in the re- cent part for voice in the Concertfor Pianoand Orchestra. It remains for me to come to terms with the vib- raphone. In oth- er words, I find my taste for timbre
lacking in ne-
cessity, and
I discover
that in the pro-
portion I give
it up, I find
I hear more and
more accurate-
ly. Beethoven
now is a sur-
prise, as accept-
able to the
ear as a cow-
bell. What are the
orchestral timbres
of the Concertfor Pianoand Orchestra? It is impos- sible to pre- dict, but this may be said: they in- vite the timbres of jazz, which more than serious music has explored the possibili- ties of instru- ments. ¶With tape and music-synthe- sizers, action with the over- tone structure of sounds can be less a matter of taste and more thor- oughly an ac- tion in a field of possibil- ities. The no- tation I have described for Var-iations deals with it as such. ¶The early works have beginnings, middles, and end- ings. The later ones do not. They begin any- where, last any length of time, and involve more or fewer instru- ments and players. They are therefore not preconceived objects, and to approach them as objects is to utterly miss
the point. They are
occasions for
experience,
and this exper-
ience is not
only received
by the ears but
by the eyes too.
An ear alone
is not a be-
ing. I have no-
ticed listening
to a record
that my attention
moves to a
moving object
or a play of
light, and at a
rehearsal of
the Williams Mix last May when all eight machines were in opera- tion the atten- tion of those pres- ent was engaged by a sixty- year-old pian- o tuner who was busy tun- ing the instru- ment for the eve- ning’s concert. It becomes evi- dent that music itself is an ideal sit- uation, not a real one. The mind may be used either to ig- nore ambient sounds, pitches oth- er than the eight- y-eight, dura- tions which are not counted, timbres which are unmusi- cal or distaste- ful, and in gen- eral to con- trol and under- stand an avail- able exper- ience. Or the mind may give up its desire to improve on cre- ation and func- tion as a faith- ful receiver of experi- ence. ¶I have not yet told any stories and yet when I give a talk I gener- ally do. The subject certain- ly suggests my telling something irrelevant
but my inclin-
ation is to
tell something apt.
That reminds me:
Several years
ago I was
present at a
lecture given
by Dr. Dai-
setz Teitaro
Suzuki. He
spoke quietly
when he spoke. Some-
times, as I was
telling a friend
yesterday eve-
ning, an airplane
would pass over-
head. The lecture
was at Colum-
bia Uni-
versity and
the campus is
directly in
line with