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. . . my study of Zen
Buddhism. . . . my inclination
was to make music about the ideas that I had encountered in the
Orient. . . . by making the music nonintentional,
and starting from an empty mind.
At first I did this by means of the Magic Square.
. . . the Sixteen Dances and the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra. Both of those use a chart like the Magic Square. They established moves on it which distinguished, as I recall, one phrase from another. It can be used compositionally to make differences by changing the move that’s made on the chart. Instead of having numbers, as the Magic Square would, the chart of course had single sounds, intervals, and aggregates. The aggregates and intervals are made on either one instrument or several. . It was while I was doing such work that Christian Wolff brought me a copy of the I Ching that his father had just published. I saw immediately that that chart was better than the Magic Square. So I began writing the Music of Changes and later the Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radios. . . .
John Cage
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