Music of Changes
Music of Changes by John Cage is the first extensive play he composed after Sonatas and Interludes, is a piano solo piece composed in 1951. Cage left Los Angeles and went to New York, New York City York offered him the opportunity to get closer to researching Asian cultures and their philosophies. History of composition
Imaginary Landscape No. 4 first finished 'Music of Changes' was the second composite work, completed in April 1951, and the third movement of the Piano Concert prepared also using chance. What inspired Cage to begin writing this work was the gift given to him by the composer Christian Wolff, a copy of the Chinese divination book, the I Ching.
The composition dates are as follows: Complete Book I on May 16, Book II on August 2, Book III on October 18 and Book IV on December 13. Cage's former mentor Henry Cowell commented that Cage had not been free of his taste in the new work, and so for a short time they worked simultaneously on Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4. There are indeed many things that incite one to consider that Music of Changes is a work of great importance for Cage, because not only is the second composition directed by chance, but that it was also the first work that Cage composed for the pianist David Tudor. Music of Changes was released completely by Tudor on January 1, 1952. Tudor also recorded the music of changes completely, in 1956. One anecdote of Cage was that: While Cage wrote the piece he asked Tudor how many arms which he must have to interpret the piece, Tudor replied that he had sixteen arms.
The duration, height, tempo of each sound passage, and volume are defined through one of the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. It is important to note that in this particular piece he used the I Ching without taking into account the magical interpretations of the same but rather as a "computer" for his chance operations. The title of the piece comes from the book of I Ching that is known as The Book of Mutations. Cage also composed several Music of Changes spin-offs, shorter pieces using the same methods and even the same graphics. These include two Pastorals (1951-52), Seven Haiku (1951-52), for MC and DT (1952).
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