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. . . HPSCHD
(Cage and Hiller). John Cage is
currently at the University of Illinois as a member of the Center for Advanced
Study. This project is a new composition of indeterminate length entitled
HPSCHD, for one to seven harpsichords, and harpsichordlike sounds
recorded on any number of tapes up to fifty-one. The tapes are both composed
and synthesized on the IBM-7094-ILLIAC II system. The first job was to
write a new subroutine for MUSICOMP called ICHING which generates first
and second choices of integers between 1 and 64 according to the rules
of changes defined by the I-Ching process. Although ICHING provides a random
distribution of these integers considered as monograms, it generates nonrandom
distributions of all the sets of digrams that depend in turn upon the
storage pattern of integers in the I-Ching reference table.
This subroutine is being used to choose pitch levels in equal-tempered scales from 5 to 56 pitches per octave, intonational deviations from these pitch levels, and, finally, durations for every pitch level so chosen. One scale will be used for each of the fifty tapes mentioned above (the 12-tone scale being omitted from the set). Programming up to this stage has been finished as of end of 1967.
Lejaren Hiller
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