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I might even say, or someone else might say of
me, that my whole dedication to music has been an attempt to free music
from the clutches of the A-B-A. When I was just beginning to write music
I made a list of all the permutations of numbers such as would produce
forms or relationships of parts in a musical composition. And I made them
for all the numbers from 2 through 11. By the time you get to the number
11 the possibilities are extraordinarily numerous. Now, when you look at
all those possibilities of formal or structural relationships, you see
that European music has used only a tiny number of them, whereas if you
simply listen to environmental sound you’re over and over struck by the
brilliance of nonorganization.
John Cage
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