Archive release

Indeterminacy: New Aspect Of Form In Instrumental And Electronic Music

John Cage / David Tudor · 1959 · Vinyl-LP-2 · US · FT 3704

Includes booklet. Late in September in 1958 I was in Stockholm in a hotel. I set about writing the present lecture which I was obliged to give a week later at the Brussels Fair. I recalled a remark made years before by David Tudor that I should make a talk that was nothing but stories. The idea was appealing when he gave it to me but I had never acted on it. A few weeks before, in Darmstadt, Karlheinz Stockhausen had said, "I'll publish your Brussels talk in Die Reihe." I replied, "You'd better wait and see what it is I write." He said, "No matter what it is, I'll publish it." My intention in putting 90 stories together in an unplanned way is to suggest that all things, sounds, stories (and, by extension, beings) are related, and that this complexity is more evident when it is not over-simplified by an idea of relationship in one person's mind. Most of the stories are things that happened that stuck in my mind. Others I read in books and remembered, those for instance, from Kwang-Tse and Sri Ramakrishna. The 2nd, 15th, 16th, 46th, and 75th stories are to be found somewhere in the literature surrounding Zen. David Tudor: piano, whistles, tape machines, and amplified slinky. David Tudor plays material from his part of the "Concert for Piano and Orchestra" (1957-58), using tracks from the "Fontana Mix" (1958-59) as noise elements where these are notated in the "Concert". There are 2 different sets here. One has Blue/Silver record labels and the "INDETERMINACY' on the box front is Red. The other has Red/Black record labels and the word "INDETERMINACY" on the box lid is Grey. (cortical)