I. NOTATION

II. PROCESSES <Chance.People.Context.Repetition>

III. IDENTITY<Unique.Moment.Time>

I. NOTATION

For the composer of experimental music, John Cage's 4'33" presents the radical attitude shift that many had towards musical notation. The mechanical, dictative mode that tradition enforces was no longer practical. In essence, the composer no longer believed that musical ideas should be filtered through the systems of musicology that dominated academic thought. Ignored in the process were the chance elements: performer error, contextual acoustics, and ambient sound.

Like Shannon and Weaver's theory of communication, serialist composition implied the direct transmission from composer to listener. Lost in this conception of his process is the "noise" infused by constraining notational system, imperfect instruments, and the previously mentioned contextual elements. Cage's piece defiantly opposes the entire system of musical transmission, sending no signal to his listener except the noise inherent in the channel between himself and the audience. The piece critiques the disregard of this noise, self-reflexively pointing to its own temporal construction, and the ability to transmit ideas that are not presentable through the common musical code.

Cornelius Cardew, in his work The Treatise, created a "graphic score, composed without reference to any system of rules governing the interpretation."(4) Questions of what to play and how to play it are left to the performer(s)' discretion. The score stands, necessarily forcing an interactive relationship to both the performer and, less obviously, listener. Perhaps one could make the comparison to language poetry here-rather than circling away from an implied referent, the piece is read only in a mode that allows the rules of the signifier to emerge temporally. This just means that, for both the listener and performer, the piece does not exist except when enacted and viewed. In our ideal conception of them, language poems do not signify a referent, but rather reveal "the structures and codes of language: how ideas are represented and formulated to transmit ideas, thoughts, and meaning."(5)
In reference to his craft, Cornelius Cardew stated:

"A Composer who hears sounds will try to find a notation for sounds. One who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving their interpretation free, in confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated."

Many experimental composers were uninterested in the referential ability of notation, but instead in the way that it could structure a performance temporally.

II.PROCESSES

Thus composition provided the opportunity to explore multiple processes. Michael Nyman divides them according to the following categories:

Chance: As Cage's piece demonstrated, aleatoric processes are inherent to any musical performance--it's up to the composer to exploit them. Therefore, when composing a piece, a composer can have (a lack of) guidelines to allow the piece to emerge. Usually associated with the "generative systems" of Brian Eno, this move harkens to the Oulipo troupe.This process is structurally inherent to any composition.

People: This process recognizes the performers who work out the piece during the performance. The composer can thus make structural use of the heterogeneity at hand. Each performer processes the notation according to his own reading, performing the piece uniquely. Michael Parson:

"This is an example of making use of 'hidden resources' in the sense of a natural individual differences (rather than talents or abilities) which is completely neglected in classical concert music, though not in folk music."(6)

Contextual: These processes are concerned with actions dependent on unpredictable conditions and on variables which arise from within the musical continuity. We can describe this process as a feedback loop-what has been generated by the piece determines the features which are to emerge later. The output of the performance is fed back in. Performers are made aware of their participation in the musical discourse, and must improvise. The composer can imbue the piece with this self-governing structure.

Repetition: This process is also at the disposal of an aware composer. Repetition is then used as the sole means by which to generate movement. Unforseen events may arise out of the repetition. Steve Reich's tape loop phasing is an example<Clip1.Clip2>. This is a process whereby two tape loops lined up in unison gradually move out of phase with each other, ultimately coming back into sync. Many surprising things occur in the course of this event.

III. IDENTITY

The identity of the piece is not found embedded within the composition. What is unique is not the permanent structure, but the way it opens itself to temporal amalgamations. Ultimately a piece is said to be indeterminate of its performance--at least in the most strict sense. Time is treated as the central, or definitional component to music. Robert Ashley:

"Cage's influence on contemporary music, on 'musicians' is such that the entire metaphor of music could chance to such an extent that-time being the uppermost as a definition of music-the ultimate result would be a music that wouldn't necessarily involve anything but the presence of people…It seems to me that the most radical redefinition of music that I could think of would be the one that defines 'music' without reference to sound."

The strucutural identity of a piece is thus only evident through the performer and listener's temporal interaction. Unlike the serialist mode of control, the dictation from the experimental composer only formulates the rules of, as Lyotard puts it, "what will have been done. Hence the fact that the work and text have the characters of an event; hence also, they always come too late for their author, or, what amounts to the same thing, their being put into work, their realization (mise en ouvre) always begin too soon."(7)