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I have always been interested in the theory of
games (since a childhood reading of Cardano, in fact) but this has not
meant anything to me as a composer or even helped me at Las Vegas. I realize
that choice is an exact mathematical concept, and that I ought to be looking
beyond the particular example for the process that generated it (even though
the particular example is all that matters to me). I realize, too, that
a really comprehensive information theory can explain
‘inspiration’—or,
anyway, the equation of its components—and, indeed, almost everything
else about my processes of musical communication. But though I am confident
these explanations would enlighten me, I am even more confident they would
not help me to compose. My attitude is merely proof that I am not an intellectual,
and therefore problems of explanation are of no very great interest to
me. To borrow G. E. Moore’s example—‘I do not see how
you can explain
to anyone who does not already know it, what “yellow”
is’—I do not see
any means of explaining why I have chosen a certain note if whoever hears
it does not already know why when he hears it.
Igor Stravinsky
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