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''Music of Changes'' is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for pianist and friend David Tudor, it is a ground-breaking piece of indeterminate music. The process of composition involved applying decisions made using the ''I Ching'', a Chinese classic text that is commonly used as a divination system. The ''I Ching'' was applied to large charts of sounds, durations, dynamics, tempo and densities. ==History of composition== ''Music of Changes'' was the second work Cage composed to be fully indeterminate in some sense (the first is ''Imaginary Landscape No. 4'', completed in April 1951, and the third movement of ''Concerto for prepared piano'' also used chance),〔See for a detailed description of the procedures used for the ''Concerto''.〕 and the first instrumental work that uses chance throughout. He was still using magic square-like charts to introduce chance into composition, when, in early 1951, Christian Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the ''I Ching'' (Wolff's father published a translation of the book at around the same time).〔.〕 This Chinese classic text is a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. For Cage it became a perfect tool to create chance-controlled compositions: he would "ask" the book questions about various aspects of the composition at hand, and use the answers to compose. In effect, the vast majority of pieces Cage completed after 1951 were created using the ''I Ching''.〔A 1973 interview with Cage quoted in : "the ''I Ching'', by means of which I write my music since the last 25 years".〕 The title of ''Music of Changes'' is derived from the title sometimes given to the ''I Ching'', "Book of Changes." Cage set to work on the piece almost immediately after receiving the book. The dates of composition are as follows: Book I completed on May 16, Book II on August 2, Book III on October 18 and Book IV on December 13.〔.〕 Cage's former mentor Henry Cowell remarked that Cage had not freed himself from his tastes in the new work,〔 and so for a short while Cage worked simultaneously on ''Music of Changes'' and ''Imaginary Landscape No. 4'', which was to do what Cowell suggested. The piece is dedicated to David Tudor, a pianist and friend with whom Cage would have a lifelong association. The two met in 1950 through Morton Feldman and ''Music of Changes'' was a sort of a collaboration between them. Tudor would learn parts of the score as soon as they were completed, although it was very hard for the pianist: Cage recalls that Tudor had to learn "a form of mathematics which he didn’t know before", and that this was "a very difficult process and very confusing for him."〔 ''Music of Changes'' was premièred in its complete form by Tudor on 1 January 1952 (although the pianist had played Book I in public earlier, on 5 July 1951). Tudor also recorded ''Music of Changes'' in its complete form, in 1956.〔Booklet of "John Cage: Music of Changes", David Tudor (piano). Hat (now) ART 133.〕 Cage also composed several "spin-offs" of ''Music of Changes'', shorter pieces using the same methods and even the same charts. These include ''Two Pastorales'' (1951–52), ''Seven Haiku'' (1951–52), ''For M.C. and D.T.'' (1952).〔.〕 The process Cage was using at the time to create music with the ''I Ching'' proved to be rather slow, so the composer would soon create a faster method in his ''Music for Piano'' series. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Music of Changes」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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