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. . . In a piece called the
Music of Changes,
which I composed using the Book of Changes, all the things I could
discern in a piece of music were subjected to chance operations. Among
the things I noticed and subjected to chance operation was tempo. If you
look at the
Music of Changes you see that every few measures, at
every structural point, things were speeding up or slowing down or remaining
constant. How much these things varied was chance-determined. David Tudor
learned a form of mathematics which he didn’t know before
in order to translate
those tempo indications into actual time. It was a very difficult process
and very confusing for him.
John Cage
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