The Selected Letters of John Cage. John Cage

commitments (performances, etc.), and when your first letter came, it caught me in the midst of activity and at a point where my way of working was still unformed (and needing to be formed). This seems now to have happened; at least I am writing a long piano work (unprepared) which will carry me through October or November,²⁷² and I doubt whether anything radically new will enter my technique until I finish this particular piece, so that I feel free now to tell you what I have been doing, and what it was that led to this new work.

      In Paris I began the String Quartet, and interrupted the writing of it to do the Calder film which you heard. The Quartet uses a gamut of sounds, some single and some aggregates, but all of them immobile, that is, staying always not only in the same register where they originally appear but on the same strings and bowed or produced in the same manner on the same instruments. There are no superpositions, the entire work being a single line. Even the tempo never changes. The continuity (what I call method) is uncontrolled and spontaneous in all except the 3rd movement, where it is strictly canonic, even though there is only one “voice.” Such ideas as the following occur: direct duration limitation with retrograde or inverse use of the gamut or vice versa. This gives some interesting results since the gamut to begin with is asymmetrical. The sound of the work is special due to the agregates and to using no vibrato. It has been performed twice and is being recorded by Columbia,²⁷³ and next Friday will be done again on a program with your 2nd Sonata and some music of Feldman.

      You ask for details about the Calder music,²⁷⁴ particularly the section of noises. What I did was very simple: to record on tape noises actually produced in Calder’s studio in the course of his work. The sounds which have the regular accelerandos are produced by large flat rectangles of metal bringing themselves to balance on narrow metallic supports. With about “two hours” of tape I satisfied myself and then proceeded to choose those noises I wished and cut and scotch-tape them together. No synchronizing was attempted and what the final result is is rather due to a chance that was admired. Unfortunately I did this at the last minute (after the music for prep[ared] p[iano] had been recorded); had I done it at the beginning, I rather imagine I would have made the entire film in this way (using also sounds recorded from nature).

      After finishing the String Quartet I wrote Six Melodies for Vn. + Pn²⁷⁵ which are simply a postscript to the Quartet and use the same gamut of sounds (but, naturally, with different timbres). Then I began to write the Concerto for Prep. Pn. and Chamber Orchestra (25 players). A new idea entered which is this: to arrange the aggregates not in a gamut (linearly) but rather in a chart formation. In this case the size of the chart was 14 by 16. That is to say: 14 different sounds produced by any number of instruments (sometimes only one) (and often including percussion integrally) constitute the top row of the chart and favor (quantitatively speaking) the flute. The second row in the chart favors the oboe + so on. Four rows favor the percussion divided: metal, wood, friction, + miscellaneous (characterized by mechanical means, e.g., the radio). The last four favor the strings. Each sound is minutely described in the chart: e.g., a particular tone, sul pont²⁷⁶ on the 2nd string of the first vn. with a particular flute tone and, for example, a wood block.

      I then made moves on this chart of a “thematic nature” but, as you may easily see, with an “athematic” result. The entire first movement uses only 2 moves, e.g., down 2, over 3, up 4, etc. This move can be varied from a given spot on the chart by going in any of the directions. The orchestra (in the first mvt.) was thus rigorously treated, while the piano remained free, having no chart, only its preparation, which, by the way, is the most complicated I have ever effected and has as a special characteristic a bridge which is elevated from the sounding board of the piano to the strings and so positioned as to produce very small microtones. In the 2nd movement the piano has a chart provided for it having the same number of elements as that for the orchestra (which latter remains the same). This movement is nothing but an actually drawn series of circles (diminishing in size) on these charts, sometimes using the sounds of the orchestra, sometimes using the sounds of the piano. (In all of this work the rhythmic structure, with which you are familiar in my work, remains as the basis of activity.)