{"title":"The Afterlives of Indeterminacy","authors":"Benjamin Piekut","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2022.2080467","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article explores composer John Cage’s turn to practice in the 1960s, placing it in a history of chance that extends into the nineteenth century, when the speculations of finance capitalism, the measurement of norms and their deviations, the statistical analysis of population and disease, and the assessment and management of risk all produced ways of calculating and mitigating risk. Cage and his primary collaborator, the pianist and electronic musician David Tudor, eschewed discrete, individual works and developed shared techniques and materials that flowed from night to night and problematised the notion of individual authorship. This improvisatory mode of action opened Cage up to complexities of indeterminacy that might have escaped him previously, most notably how one narrows the vast range of unforeseen possible outcomes by working with trusted partners and developing shared expectations and desires in a manner congruent with Michel Foucault’s classic definition of power: an action upon possible future or present actions. The article focuses on Cage’s work with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and especially Cunningham’s important Event format, as well as Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008), Cage’s Variations IV (1963), and Pauline Oliveros’s In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer (1969).","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Contemporary Music Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2022.2080467","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article explores composer John Cage’s turn to practice in the 1960s, placing it in a history of chance that extends into the nineteenth century, when the speculations of finance capitalism, the measurement of norms and their deviations, the statistical analysis of population and disease, and the assessment and management of risk all produced ways of calculating and mitigating risk. Cage and his primary collaborator, the pianist and electronic musician David Tudor, eschewed discrete, individual works and developed shared techniques and materials that flowed from night to night and problematised the notion of individual authorship. This improvisatory mode of action opened Cage up to complexities of indeterminacy that might have escaped him previously, most notably how one narrows the vast range of unforeseen possible outcomes by working with trusted partners and developing shared expectations and desires in a manner congruent with Michel Foucault’s classic definition of power: an action upon possible future or present actions. The article focuses on Cage’s work with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and especially Cunningham’s important Event format, as well as Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008), Cage’s Variations IV (1963), and Pauline Oliveros’s In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer (1969).
期刊介绍:
Contemporary Music Review provides a forum for musicians and musicologists to discuss recent musical currents in both breadth and depth. The main concern of the journal is the critical study of music today in all its aspects—its techniques of performance and composition, texts and contexts, aesthetics, technologies, and relationships with other disciplines and currents of thought. The journal may also serve as a vehicle to communicate documentary materials, interviews, and other items of interest to contemporary music scholars. All articles are subjected to rigorous peer review before publication. Proposals for themed issues are welcomed.