Indeterminacy and The ‘Open Work’ Defining ‘classical’ music Composer Text (Musical Notation) (Reading) Performer (Passive) Audience Philip Guston, Painting (1954) Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow (1956) Morton Feldman (1926-1987) Intersection #1 (1951) “My desire here was not to “compose,” but to project sounds into time, free from a compositional rhetoric that had no place here. In order not to involve the performer (i.e. myself) in memory… and because sounds no longer had an inherent symbolic shape, I allowed for indeterminacies in regard to pitch.” Indeterminacy: Deliberately leaving one or more elements of the composition to the discretion of the performer. Indeterminacy of pitch: “high, middle, and low” chosen by each instrumentalist in performance. Alexander Calder, Untitled (1976) Alexander Calder, Untitled (1976) Alexander Calder, Untitled (1976) Earle Brown (1926-2002) Four Systems (1952) “a conceptually ‘mobile’ approach to basically fixed graphic elements, subject to an infinite number of performance realizations through the involvement of the performer’s . response to the intentionally ambiguous graphic stimuli . .” • No indication for length, form, instrumentation, pitch content, dynamics, etc. • Graphics only: consists of patterns of lines of various thicknesses. John Cage Variations II (1961) • “for any number of players and any sound producing means.” • No fixed document; only moveable transparent sheets. • A means of generating a score, considered infinitely variable • Pianist David Tudor Early Electronic Music Early Sound Technology c. 1880: Wax Cylinder Early Sound Technology c. 1890 Gramophone Early Sound Technology 1935, Germany: Magnetic Tape 1951: Portable Field Recorder Musique Concrète Pierre Schaffer (1910-1995) Études aux chemins de fer (1948) • Composed entirely of recorded sound Elektronische Musik Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) Studie II (1954) • Composed entirely of sound produced by electronic devices. • Sine Tones (“Pure Tones”) Music… Without performers. Infinitely repeatable. Karlheinz Stockhausen Gesang der Jünglinge (1956) • Blends recorded and synthetic sound • Text from book of Daniel; “the Fiery Furnace” Karlheinz Stockhausen Mikrophonie (1961) • Live electronic music • Filters / Filtering .