[Voice 2:] “Never draw the line and say: ‘beyond this line there is no art.’ But I sympathize with you. Many a new task is an old, or worse, a poor task in disguise. It sounds good in theory, fails in practice. Desk-experiment one may call it; choices allotted to the performer by a composer who has no live experience with performance problems, and who works out a new task like a chess problem. Freedom—choice—dangerous words. Yet the aleatory idea is no idle invention, and quite naturally follows the serial idea. In fact the two complement one another, share the basic premise of an ingenious ‘pre-ordering,’ which guarantees a particular result. Both involve a canvassing of possibilities, or games of numerology. Both run the risk of self-deceit, serial music in the direction of a would-be order, aleatory music in the direction of a would-be freedom. In our most recent music the two techniques join forces, producing perhaps the most interesting ‘laboratory situation’ of all times.”

Lukas Foss