Two Concepts of Indeterminacy in Music

Two Concepts of Indeterminacy
in Music
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

David Cline
In an interview recorded in 1976, Karlheinz Stockhausen looked back on

his early influences and noted the profound effect that quantum mechan-
ics had exerted upon him. “Quantum physics . . . was something we dis-
cussed every day,” he even suggested.1 It is not entirely clear which period
he had in mind or who else he was referring to when he made this claim.
Perhaps he was thinking of his time in Werner Meyer-Eppler’s classes in
phonetics, communication science, and information theory at Bonn
University, which he began attending in 1953–54.2 It seems likely, how-
ever, that the revolution in physics was in the air in new music circles in
Europe before then. Meyer-Eppler, a scientist adept in multiple fields, was
a regular presence at the International Summer Courses for New Music in
Darmstadt in the early 1950s,3 and it is probable that he discussed quan-
tum mechanics in a lecture delivered at this annual gathering as early as
1950, prior to Stockhausen’s first visit the following year. Meyer-Eppler’s
unpublished lecture notes for this event refer to the “Gabor Matrix,”4 a
theoretical construct designed for use in characterizing the phenomenol-
ogy of auditory experience in terms of aggregates of “acoustical quanta.”5
The Gabor Matrix was named after its inventor, Dennis Gabor, who
began his groundbreaking analysis of “subjective acoustics” by focusing on
an apparent deficiency in the standard account of hearing.6 According to
this view, credited to Hermann von Helmholtz and Georg Ohm, the ear
performs a Fourier analysis of sounds by measuring the relative intensities
of their spectral components, which are then recombined in the brain.
Gabor disagreed because the spectral components under Fourier analysis
are perfectly sinusoidal and infinite in duration, meaning that they are, he
maintained, fundamentally incapable of accounting for the inherently
temporal dimension of auditory experience.7 His solution was to propose a
granular theory, in which individual sounds could be viewed as functions
of “elementary signals,” each of which is describable by an “effective
duration” and an “effective bandwidth,” these being equivalent to the
doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdz007 102:82–110
Advance Access publication July 4, 2019.
The Musical Quarterly
C The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
V
For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
Two Concepts of Indeterminacy 83
mean square deviations of the corresponding energy distributions from the

average values of time and frequency, respectively.8 Crucially, he also
maintained that the effective duration and effective bandwidth of an
elementary signal are inversely proportional to each other,9 thereby

importing a degree of inherent “uncertainty” into the foundations of psy-
choacoustics,10 which, he argued, was supported by contemporary experi-
mental studies of auditory discrimination.11 The entire approach was
openly modeled on aspects of the mathematical formulation of quantum
mechanics, and in particular on Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty princi-
ple.12 This principle posits an ineliminable imprecision in simultaneous
measurements of canonically conjugate variables, such as momentum and
position or energy and time.13 The inverse relation between effective du-
ration and effective bandwidth at the granular level is apparent in Gabor’s
mathematical description of an elementary signal, which modulates a pure
sinusoidal oscillation by superposing a bell-shaped envelope. This enve-
lope focuses the associated energy within a given time period,14 but it also
delivers the desired interdependency: the modulation blurs the frequency
of the sinusoidal component, with the degree to which frequency is
blurred rising with the severity of the modulation, which increases pro-
gressively as the effective duration contracts.15
Gabor also pointed out that the effective duration and effective
bandwidth of an elementary signal can be represented by a rectangular
area or “cell” in a diagram in which frequency and time are laid down
along orthogonal axes.16 The relative dimensions of the rectangle will de-
pend upon the distribution of uncertainty between frequency and time,
but the area of the rectangle will be fixed by the inverse proportionality
between them. He concluded that the face of the diagram is divisible into
an array of similarly shaped rectangles, and that any sound can be repre-
sented by assigning an amplitude to each rectangular element.17 The sub-
division of the diagram into minimal rectangular elements, shaped by the
uncertainty relation between effective duration and effective bandwidth,
is the Gabor Matrix to which Meyer-Eppler referred.
If quantum mechanics stimulated new music in the 1950s, this was,
in all likelihood, because of its probabilistic basis, which would have reso-
nated with an emerging preoccupation with statistical concepts among
young European composers.18 My reason for dwelling on these matters is
not because of this loose connection between quantum physics and the
statistical turn in European new music, but because the uncertainty princi-
ple is also referred to as the “principle of indeterminacy,”19 particularly by
those who regard the posited inexactness in our knowledge of observables
as attributable to an inherent indefiniteness in the very fabric of reality.20
Given the fashion among regular attendees at the Darmstadt new music
84 The Musical Quarterly
courses for appropriating scientific and technological terms for use in mu-
sicological contexts,21 it is hardly surprising to find them experimenting
with comparable jargon. Thus, in 1954, in a co-authored publication,
Herbert Eimert, Fritz Enkel, and Stockhausen referred to the use of

“complex, indeterminate [unbestimmter] sounds” in electronic music,22 by
which they seem to have meant sounds lacking precisely specifiable fre-
quencies, while Stockhausen, writing on this occasion as a sole author,
characterized noise as a sonic process with indeterminate (indeterminable)
or only approximately determinate mean pitch.23 Meanwhile, in a
contemporaneous address at the new music courses, Wolfgang Edward
Rebner referenced the production of sounds with indeterminate (unbes-
timmter) pitch by certain percussion instruments, including the prepared
piano.24 Two years later, Theodor Adorno acknowledged Stockhausen’s
willingness to diverge from the oppressive restrictions imposed by integral
serialism by suggesting that he had incorporated “a threshold of
‘indeterminacy’” (eine Schwelle von “Unbestimmbarkeit”) into his composi-
tions.25 Then, in 1958, Boulez joined the fray, using “indeterminate”
(indeterminee) as synonymous with “aleatoric” (aleatoires),26 a word appar-
ently coined by Meyer-Eppler, signaling randomness, in a notorious attack
on the use of certain forms of chance in music.
Despite this activity in Europe, it was on the other side of the
Atlantic Ocean that the formative uses of the term “indeterminacy” began
to emerge, initially in the writings of Christian Wolff. In the summer of
1957, Wolff prepared an article titled “New and Electronic Music” for the
literary journal New Directions,27 whose editor had commissioned him to
write a “general introduction” to the latest developments in classical mu-
sic.28 In surveying the field, Wolff characterized recently composed works
by various American and European composers as containing “a gamut of
degrees of indeterminacy [that] are left to the performer’s choice,”29 and
he went on to describe John Cage’s Music for Piano series as involving
“large areas of indeterminacy in respect both to composition and perform-
ance.”30 Wolff’s commentary makes it clear that the indeterminacy in re-
spect to composition of the works in the Music for Piano series stemmed
from Cage’s recourse to chance operations, in this case tossing coins and
consulting imperfections on music paper, during the compositional pro-
cess,31 while their indeterminacy in respect to performance was attribut-
able to the fact that “only pitches or noises and their relative place in
space are notated.”32 Evidently, Wolff’s two types of indeterminacy were
not meant to be mutually exclusive.
The reasons why New Directions rejected Wolff’s submission are not
documented, but the technical character of some passages and the empha-
sis placed on Stockhausen’s output may have been contributory factors.
This would explain why a revised version, published in Audience magazine

in 1958,33 is shorter, simpler, and more skewed toward works produced in
the United States. Although the terminology employed in the later ver-
sion is unchanged, the original text retains interest because it includes a

salient passage that does not appear in the published edition.
Wolff’s parents had published Heisenberg’s Philosophic Problems of
Nuclear Science in 1952,34 but their son remembered connecting the term
“indeterminacy” with quantum physics only after completing his article.35
The original appeal of this new terminology was probably two-fold: it
allowed him to classify various ideas circulating in new music under a sin-
gle umbrella term, thereby insinuating a thematic unity within an ostensi-
bly disparate field; and it seemed to promise a clear distinction between
new and old music. Wolff worked on his article during a period in which
he had recommenced composing works that are “indeterminate in respect
to performance.”36 This was some years after a brief foray into this same
territory and his own experiments with chance.37 Cage’s enthusiasm for
chance operations had been constant since 1951, but his interest in giving
greater leeway to performers also intensified around the same time as did
Wolff’s,38 and it is clear that he found his erstwhile pupil’s theorization of
recent music useful. Wolff remembered Cage being struck by the utility of
the unfamiliar nomenclature while perusing the unpublished version of his
essay.39 This was before Cage departed for the Darmstadt International
Summer Courses for New Music, where he quoted from the published ver-
sion of Wolff’s text in a celebrated lecture series, bearing the overall title
“Composition as Process,”40 which was attended by prominent and emerg-
ing figures in new music.41 The second of Cage’s three lectures bore the
subtitle “Indeterminacy,” and it was this address in particular that made
extensive use of that term in discussing the concept of a composition
“being indeterminate with respect to its performance,”42 a wording that
evidently adverted to Wolff’s subdivision of indeterminacy into two subor-
dinate types, even though this may not have been apparent to audience
members unfamiliar with Wolff’s views.
Although Rebner had referenced indeterminacy in his address at the
Darmstadt courses in 1954, it seems to have been Cage’s long disquisition
on the topic at the same event in 1958 and its subsequent inclusion in
his influential collection of texts Silence: Lectures and Writings, published
three years later, that secured a permanent place for the term “indetermi
nacy” in the vocabulary of classical music. Nevertheless, the ensuing his-
tory demonstrates that Cage’s lecture failed to establish a single agreed us-
age of the word. As an instrument of turf warfare, designed to challenge
the European musical tradition and secure higher ground for new music
from the United States, with indeterminacy designated a specifically
American phenomenon,43 Cage’s lectures were brilliantly crafted and, in-

deed, partially successful: only a year after delivering them, he would de-
scribe Cornelius Cardew, Sylvano Bussotti, and Nam June Paik, all of
whom had heard him speak at Darmstadt, as among those “who imbibe

American actions,”44 and it is clear that the critic and music theorist
Heinz-Klaus Metzger, a Darmstadt stalwart, was another early convert to
Cage’s cause.45 As an instrument of pedagogy, Cage’s lecture series, and
his second lecture in particular, were imperfect, however, and his failure to
“nail” the concept of indeterminacy left scope for two fundamentally different
interpretations of his position that would plague its application to music
thereafter.46 This essay exposes this previously unacknowledged inconsistency
and its source in Cage’s presentation while testing and developing the two
distinct concepts of indeterminacy that emerged.
“New and Electronic Music”

Wolff’s use of a common term in his distinction between indeterminacy in
respect to composition and indeterminacy in respect to performance
implies an underlying similarity that unites these two types. The published
edition of his article is silent on the source of this similarity,47 but its
lengthier predecessor includes the following remarks, which indicate his
original position:
It is characteristic of any sound produced according to a set of instructions,

no matter how complete, to appear in a manner never quite altogether pre-
dictable. There is always some margin of indeterminacy.48
Hence indeterminacy is unpredictability: indeterminacy in respect to com-

position is present when chance processes were consulted by the composer
because this ensured that he or she could not foresee the outcome of the
compositional process and therefore the sonic outcome in performance;
indeterminacy in respect to performance is present when “only pitches or
noises and their relative place in space are notated” because the sonic out-
come is dependent upon decisions taken by the performer that the com-
poser is similarly unable to anticipate.49
The reason why Wolff chose to remove these remarks from the pub-
lished edition of his article may have been that they telegraph a potential
weakness in his position: all musical notation is silent on some matters, so
there will always be some aspects of a performance that the composer will
be unable to predict; moreover, the composer cannot have foreknowledge
of every circumstance that will affect the realization of those elements
that are notated, for these will be affected by acoustical conditions and
the interpreter’s input. Strictly speaking, therefore, notated music will al-
ways be indeterminate in respect to performance, meaning that Wolff’s
new concept is incapable of differentiating new from old music.
An attempted fix might begin by enumerating a list of focus

properties that excludes those affected by acoustical conditions and inter-
pretative input; the suggestion would then be that a composition is inde-
terminate if, and only if, its composer was incapable of predicting values
for one or more properties on this list. A difficulty is that this precludes
certain varieties of indeterminacy that we may wish to admit. For exam-
ple, decay rates and therefore durations are influenced by acoustical con-
ditions, whereas dynamics are influenced by acoustics and interpretative
input, so durations and dynamics must be excluded, but if the composer
deliberately refrained from giving guidance about either of these parame-
ters, it seems clear that this is the wrong course.
A different response would be to insist that indeterminacy in respect
to performance always features a relatively high degree of unpredictability,
but how and where to draw the line between relatively high and low are
likely to prove troublesome issues. The difficulty becomes clear from a
comparison between the limitless complexity of actual performances,
regarded as physical processes, and the comparatively minimal indications
presented by musical notation: quantitatively speaking, it appears that all
notated music is, in effect, equally unpredictable.
Wolff’s concept of indeterminacy in respect to composition is simi-
larly compromised if a distinguishing trait of creative processes is the ab-
sence of foreknowledge of their results, as many have argued.50 According
to this view, in cases in which composing is genuinely creative, foreseeing
the results of the compositional process is logically impossible: mentally re-
hearsing the remaining stages of the process is likely to be portrayed as
completing it, not as having advance knowledge of its outcome. It follows
that composing always produces music that was previously unforeseeable,
whether or not chance was consulted.
Arguably, there is a more general problem with Wolff’s proposal: its
recourse to the modal concept of unpredictability results in an undesirable
break with actuality. Equating indeterminacy with unpredictability entails
that certain outcomes are actually unforeseen when indeterminacy is
present, but it does not exclude theoretically predictable outcomes being
actually unforeseen (because of less-than-perfect foresight) when indeter-
minacy is absent. Thus, the extent to which a composer working on a
composition that is neither indeterminate in respect to composition nor
indeterminate in respect to performance foresees the resulting sound may,
in actuality, be no greater than in the case of a composer working with in-
determinacy. All that Wolff’s proposal requires in this scenario is that the
degree of foreknowledge involved in composing the work that is not inde-

terminate in respect to composition or performance might have been
greater.
The intuition underpinning Wolff’s idea was that the composer can-

not foresee the outcome of the compositional process and therefore the
sonic outcome in performance when composing with chance, and that the
composer’s view is similarly restricted when “only pitches or noises and
their relative place in space are notated,” but this can also be captured in
another way. The reason why the composer’s visibility is limited when in-
determinacy is present is surely because he or she relinquished control
over the remaining phases of the process that will eventually culminate in
the production of sounds to an unpredictable agency. This suggests
grounding the higher-level concept of indeterminacy not in the unpredict-
able, but in the relinquishment of control: a composition is indeterminate
if, and only if, by one means or other, the composer relinquished control
over the sonic outcome to an unpredictable force.
An advantage of this approach is that it highlights a distinguishing
trait of indeterminacy that must be present in actuality; another is that it
does not conflict with the popular conception of creativity described above.
The suggested modification does not circumvent all of the problems faced
by its predecessor, however, for there will always be unpredictable aspects of
performance that a composer is unable to control, including those depen-
dent upon acoustical conditions and the performer’s input, but we encoun-
tered exactly the same issue with Wolff’s original idea, so the new proposal
is no more disadvantaged than his in this respect.
An important similarity between Wolff’s original proposal and the
suggested alternative is that both focus on aspects of the composer’s situa-
tion. Whereas Wolff concentrated on what the composer was in a position
to predict, the suggested revision turns the spotlight on a particular aspect
of the composer’s procedure. This orientation is clearly unavoidable if a
concept of indeterminacy in respect to composition is deemed desirable.
The inevitable concentration on some aspect of the compositional process
then serves to constrain the concept of indeterminacy in respect to perfor-
mance, which must be fashioned so that the two sister concepts have
something in common. The net effect is to distance the concept of inde-
terminacy from the product of the musical process, which is the music
itself.
“Composition as Process II: Indeterminacy”

In his second Darmstadt lecture, Cage discussed seven compositions
and judged whether each was “indeterminate with respect to its
performance.”51 His judgment was affirmative in connection with

Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke XI, Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue,
Morton Feldman’s Intersection 3, Earle Brown’s 4 Systems, and Wolff’s Duo
for Pianists II, but negative in connection with his own Music of Changes

and Brown’s Indices, which were both criticized for thereby exerting an
“intolerable” degree of control over performers.52 Although Klavierstücke
XI and 4 Systems were, strictly speaking, deemed to be indeterminate in re-
spect to performance, they too were censured, but on other grounds: the
indeterminacy of Klavierstücke XI was “ineffective” because it did not
“remove the work in its performance from the body of European musical
conventions” whereas 4 Systems was sanctioned because the notation can
be read “right side up, upside down, sideways, up and down,” a directive
that Cage judged too reminiscent of the conventional operation of inver-
sion.53 The lecture concluded with some brief remarks about the concept
of a composition that is indeterminate in respect to performance, the opti-
mum spatial location of performers playing this music, and the role of the
conductor in directing them.
Cage’s opening salvo illustrates his method of judging individual
compositions:
This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its

performance. The Klavierstücke XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen is an exam-
ple. The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach is an example. In The Art
of Fugue, structure, which is the division of the whole into parts; method,
which is the note-to-note procedure; and form, which is the expressive
content, the morphology of the continuity, are all determined. Frequency
and duration characteristics of the material are also determined. Timbre
and amplitude characteristics of the material, by not being given, are inde-
terminate. This indeterminacy brings about the possibility of a unique
overtone structure and decibel range for each performance of The Art of
Fugue. In the case of the Klavierstücke XI, all the characteristics of the ma-
terial are determined, and so too is the note-to-note procedure, the
method. The division of the whole into parts, the structure, is determinate.
The sequence of these parts, however, is indeterminate, bringing about the
possibility of a unique form, which is to say a unique morphology of the
continuity, a unique expressive content, for each performance.54
Cage’s assessments of other cases follow a similar pattern.55 For each com-
position, he considered whether structure, method, form, frequency, dura-
tion, timbre, and amplitude are “determined” or “determinate.” When
one or more parameters in this list are not determined, he judged the com-
position to be indeterminate in respect to performance. When every pa-
rameter in the list is determined, he took the opposite view. The unstated,
but unmistakable, implication was that a composition is indeterminate in

respect to performance if, and only if, at least one of the parameters Cage
highlighted is not determined.
A question not explicitly addressed was what constitutes being deter-

mined or determinate. Cage relied on his use of these words to convey his
intended meaning, and, for six of his seven parameters, being uniquely
specified by a notation appears to fit the bill. For example, in The Art of
Fugue, pitches and durations are determined because they are specified in
the score, whereas instrumentation and dynamics are not determined be-
cause they are not laid out in like fashion. In a similar vein, the structure
of Klavierstücke XI is determined because the score specifies nineteen self-
contained units, each of which, if played, must be played in its entirety,
while its form is indeterminate because the order in which the units ap-
pear is not set in stone. This straightforward interpretation is compro-
mised by Cage’s treatment of “method,” more on which anon.
The foregoing procedure occupies most of Cage’s lecture, but the
picture it presents is complicated by comments that appear after the dis-
cussion of individual cases:
This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its

performance. That composition is necessarily experimental. An experi-
mental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen. . . . A perfor-
mance of a composition which is indeterminate of its performance is
necessarily unique. It cannot be repeated.56
This yields two new preconditions of being indeterminate in respect to

performance: being “experimental” and being such that each performance
is necessarily unique. These are addressed below, in reverse order.
As stated, the second supplementary condition is ineffective because
it follows from the truism that different performances necessarily differ in
at least some respects just by virtue of being different.57 If we read the con-
dition as requiring that their performances differ to a “greater than nor-
mal” extent, then it is simply incorrect. An initial difficulty is how to
delineate what is normal without importing circularity, but a more serious
problem is that the modification is too onerous. Some performers ap-
proach the works that Cage deemed indeterminate in respect to perfor-
mance by playing from fully notated realizations prepared in advance, and
it would surely be wrong to insist, against conventional wisdom, that this
precludes them from performing the indeterminate works in question.
Cage’s longstanding collaborator David Tudor tackled Intersection 3, 4
Systems, and many other comparable works in just this manner and is uni-
versally credited with having played them.58 When Tudor proceeded thus,
it seems correct to say that he played his realization and thereby per-
formed the composition on which it was based, that is, he succeeded in
performing two works concurrently. If we weaken the modification, rein-
terpreting Cage’s comments as requiring only that their performances

could in principle differ to a greater than normal extent, then it appears to
be a corollary of the point made in his discussion of individual cases, that
in works that are indeterminate in respect to performance, one or more
parameters are not determined. This is provided that being “determined”
is read as indicated above, that is, as being uniquely specified by a
notation.
The other supplementary requirement for indeterminacy in respect
to performance, which is being “experimental,” is more noteworthy. In
two earlier texts, Cage described the use of chance operations as a means
for creating experimental music,59 which certainly implies that Music of
Changes and Indices are both experimental. This is because, in composing
the former, Cage is known to have tossed coins to determine his choices
from charts of predetermined options,60 while, in composing Indices,
Brown is known to have applied a prearranged program for selecting out-
comes to tables of random numbers.61 By the same token, Cage had con-
cluded in his second Darmstadt lecture that neither of these pieces is
indeterminate in respect to performance. The correct diagnosis of this ap-
parent inconsistency is not that he was using the term “experimental” dif-
ferently: the explanation of what counts as an experimental action in his
second lecture, as “one the outcome of which is not foreseen,”62 appears
almost verbatim in one of the earlier texts.63 The correct diagnosis is, in-
stead, that he regarded being experimental as a broader classification of
musical works that includes those that are indeterminate in respect to per-
formance and those that are indeterminate in respect to composition as
subsets, a conclusion that mirrors Wolff’s earlier stance. This reading of
Cage’s position explains another apparent inconsistency in his comments
about Music of Changes: in his first Darmstadt lecture, he described its
structure as “indeterminate,” but in his second lecture, he stated that its
structure is “determined” in a passage which concludes that Music of
Changes is not indeterminate in respect to performance.64 The source of
the apparent mismatch is clear in the light of Wolff’s “New and Electronic
Music”: in Cage’s first lecture, he was referencing his use of chance opera-
tions, hence indeterminacy in respect to composition, whereas in his
second lecture, he was alluding to its fully notated aspect, hence indeter-
minacy in respect to performance.
In these ways, Cage was following Wolff’s lead,65 but where he dif-
fered was in his assessment of the common denominator. Wolff located
this in the unforeseeable, but Cage’s comments quoted above show that
he conceived of it in terms of the actually unforeseen. The latter is consid-

erably less plausible than the former as a distinguishing trait of music that
is indeterminate because it is patently obvious that most composers do not
foresee every aspect of their music in the early stages of composing. No

doubt the extent to which the final outcome is unforeseen often decreases
as the compositional process progresses, but this is equally true in cases in-
volving the use of chance operations.
This is a serious deficiency, of course, but Cage’s lecture has a more
insidious defect. On the one hand, it focuses exclusively on indeterminacy
in respect to performance, which it tends to present as equivalent to being
imprecisely specified by a notation. This focus creates the impression that
the modifier “in respect to performance” is doing no work, a suspicion
reinforced by the lecture’s subtitle and its notable silence on other types of
indeterminacy. On the other hand, it is clear that Cage was, in actual fact,
following Wolff in assuming a higher level concept of indeterminacy sim-
pliciter that presides over the concepts of indeterminacy in respect to
composition and performance.
The situation is made only more confusing by Cage’s inclusion of
“method,” meaning “note-to-note procedure,” in his list of parameters for
assessing individual works. This implies that a composition is indetermi-
nate in respect to performance if the method was not “determined,” but in
Wolff’s theory, aspects of compositional method are germane to indeter-
minacy in respect to composition—surely a more logical course than
Cage’s, given the terminology employed. To make matters worse, Cage’s
assessments of method are sometimes diametrically opposed to those ne-
cessitated by Wolff’s approach. Thus, Cage judged that the method used
in Music of Changes was “determined,”66 even though Wolff presented this
particular composition as exemplifying indeterminacy in respect to com-
position.67 Similarly problematic is Cage’s assessment of the method used
in Intersection 3 as “definitely indeterminate,”68 even though this particular
piece does not appear to be indeterminate in respect to composition be-
cause Feldman avoided chance operations, instead composing “by ear.”69
The source of this tangle is Cage’s conception of determinacy in connec-
tion with method, which is deducible from comments in his first
Darmstadt lecture. There he contrasted his Sonatas and Interludes and First
Construction (in Metal) by suggesting that the method employed in the for-
mer “was that of considered improvisation,” whereas the method used in
the latter was “subjected to organization,” that is, planned.70 And it was
surely this distinction between planned organization and considered im-
provisation that he was thinking of, two days later, in judging Music of
Changes and Intersection 3.71 Evidently, Cage was operating with an
idiosyncratic conception of being “determined” in connection with

method, which was inconsistent with the way in which he used it
elsewhere.
The reasons why Cage meddled with Wolff’s taxonomy are not

documented, but he must have been dissatisfied with its original form.
The main limitation of the approach favored by Wolff is its seemingly in-
evitable focus on the composer’s situation, rather than the music itself,
though there are countervailing reasons why Cage may have had reserva-
tions about abandoning it completely. For example, it must have had con-
siderable utility in his eyes: bracketing his use of chance processes with his
penchant for imprecise indications to the performer under a single rubric
revealed an otherwise hidden consistency within his own thinking.72
Moreover, he seems to have believed, quite wrongly, that by aligning his
theorization of indeterminacy with his previous theorization of
“experimental” music, he was thereby validating this earlier strand in his
thinking. The upshot was that he hedged his bets, observing aspects of
Wolff’s terminology while laying stress on only one branch of the associ-
ated taxonomy, while at the same time attempting to paste over the
resulting hole by grafting a criterion based on compositional methodology
onto a concept of indeterminacy in respect to performance, apparently
centered on the dictates of notation.
Whatever his motivations, there can be no doubt that his confusing
presentation paved the way for two radically different readings of his
words, each of which was reconstructed from selected elements in his
thinking: one, comparable with Wolff’s, involving a higher-level concept
focused on the composer’s situation, which I have argued must be proce-
dural in character, with lower level relativizations to composition and per-
formance;73 and another, considerably narrower in scope,74 without
corresponding lower level concepts, focused on the specifications laid out
in the score. Wisely, both sides ignored Cage’s wayward treatment of
method.
The Procedural Concept of Indeterminacy

Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4 is scored for twelve radios with unpre-
dictable outputs that depend upon the time and location of a concert
presentation, so it is clearly indeterminate in respect to performance.75
But the source of the indeterminacy appears different from those in the
examples discussed by Cage. In them, the relinquishment of control is at-
tributable to a certain “looseness” in the notation, which increases the
performer’s freedom of choice, but Imaginary Landscape No. 4, which
specifies resonant frequencies of the radio sets and manipulations of their
volume controls, loosens the composer’s authority in another way, by stip-

ulating the use of an inherently unpredictable instrument.76 This example
highlights the fact that the procedural concept of indeterminacy in respect
to performance covers two different types of case: the first in which con-

trol is ceded to the performer through the use of a notation that specifies
outcomes imprecisely, henceforth “indeterminacy in respect to notation”;
the second in which the uncontrol is attributable to the vagaries of the
performance situation through the use of unpredictable instruments,
henceforth “indeterminacy in respect to execution.” These new concepts
are not mutually exclusive with each other or with indeterminacy in re-
spect to composition; indeed, music that instances all three concepts—by
being composed with chance operations, notated loosely, and employing
inherently unpredictable instruments—is evidently conceivable.
Should we also add to our procedural taxonomy a concept of inde-
terminacy in respect to listening? There are good reasons for resisting this
further step. To begin with, the resulting classification is bound to be too
inclusive because a composer always relinquishes control of the listening
experience to an unpredictable agency—the listener. The conclusion that
all composed music instances the concept would also have a knock-on ef-
fect, which would be to render anodyne the highest level procedural con-
cept of indeterminacy simpliciter, which, by implication, would also be
made similarly applicable to all composed music.
Cage’s 40 3300 has been described as “the ultimate indeterminate
piece,”77 so it is politic to chart its location in the classification outlined
above. This exercise is complicated by the fact that 40 3300 has existed in
several versions, none of them conventionally regarded as definitive. The
original manuscript, from which David Tudor played at the premiere in
1952, was lost, but subsequently reconstructed from memory twice by him
many years later.78 These reconstructions differ from one another and
from the two editions by Cage published by C. F. Peters Corporation, both
of which postdate the premiere.79 In the interests of simplicity, I will focus
on the latter.80 These are EP 6777, a text-based score with the word
“Tacet” given in connection with each of the work’s three movements,
henceforth the “Tacet” edition,81 and EP 6777a, an earlier version of the
score, which was nevertheless published later,82 presented in a propor-
tional notation that is devoid of symbols, henceforth the “proportionally
notated” edition.83
Cage’s testimony suggests that the proportionally notated edition is
indeterminate in respect to composition. In 1960, he recalled building up
the lengths of the three constituent movements specified in the lost origi-
nal manuscript by dealing from a previously shuffled deck of cards labeled
with short durations.84 These lengths are listed in the program for the first
performance and the figures given—3000 , 20 2300 , and 10 4000 —coincide with
those included in the proportionally notated version. Evidently, the latter
were based on the former, in which case they remained firmly grounded in
his earlier recourse to chance. This edition is not indeterminate in respect

to performance, however, even though, in composing 40 3300 , Cage’s stated
purpose was to draw the audience’s attention to unpredictable background
noise in the performing space and to thereby suggest that these background
noises are themselves music.85 This might look like an instance of indeter-
minacy in respect to execution because Cage relinquished control of the
sounds that the audience would hear to the concert hall situation, but this
is equally true of most other examples of notated music, and for exactly the
same reason. Moreover, he did not relinquish control of the sounds that the
performers would make because the absence of symbols indicates that the
performers are to remain silent. What differentiates 40 3300 is that the pre-
scribed absence of intended sound is meant to facilitate a shift in the audi-
ence’s focus toward the unintended sounds in its immediate environment,
but if it succeeds in this regard, it does so obliquely. There is an interpreta-
tive leap that the listener must make; it is not a “given” in the music, wit-
ness the fact that the audience at the first performance “missed the point,”
as Cage himself vouchsafed.86 Compare the case of Imaginary Landscape No.
4 in which he relinquished control of the sounds that the performers would
make to the actual circumstances of performance.
Whereas the proportionally notated edition is indeterminate in re-
spect to composition, but not in respect to performance, the reverse is true
of the Tacet edition. The explanatory notes insinuate that a performance
and its three constituent parts may be of any length,87 meaning that the
composition is indeterminate in respect to performance (and notation) be-
cause the total duration and the division of the whole into parts (structure)
are not specified. In deciding upon this extremely flexible outcome, it seems
highly likely that Cage’s personal preferences overruled his earlier recourse
to chance in calculating durations. Although it is possible that the division
of the whole into exactly three movements was originally decided by chance
operations, it seems more likely that this was a deliberate choice, meant to
hint at sonata form.88 Thus, Cage does not seem to have relinquished con-
trol of any aspect of this edition to an unforeseeable agency; consequently,
it does not qualify as indeterminate in respect to composition.
The Substantive Concept of Indeterminacy

In assessing specific examples for traces of indeterminacy, Cage considered
whether various parameters were specified. As noted above, this method
points to a concept of indeterminacy that applies to the composer’s
specifications, to what is notated: a composition is indeterminate if, and

only if, it does not specify precise values for at least one of the said param-
eters. Whereas the modified form of Wolff’s concept of indeterminacy, de-
veloped above, focuses on procedural aspects of the compositional

process, presenting its instances as consequences of uncontrol, the alterna-
tive suggested by Cage’s modus operandi addresses the substance of the
resulting music,89 presenting it as imprecisely specified. Ergo, the proce-
dural concept of indeterminacy simpliciter, which presides over the lower
level relativizations to composition, notation, and execution, does not also
encompass the substantive concept of indeterminacy, which sits entirely
outside the procedural classification. If a composition falls under the sub-
stantive concept, then this implies that the composer relinquished control,
but implication and presentation differ.90
The substantive concept of indeterminacy applies to Imaginary
Landscape No. 4 because the sounds are not specified by Cage’s notation:
parametrically speaking, the music is entirely undefined, even though the
actions to be undertaken by the radio operators are fully notated. The sub-
stantive concept also applies to the Tacet edition of 40 3300 because, in this
version, duration and structure are not indicated. However, it does not ap-
ply to the proportionally notated edition, in which these parameters are
both given.
A possible misconception is that the substantive brand of indetermi-
nacy is a property of musical notations.91 The composer’s specifications
are communicated via a notation, to be sure, but achievement and means
are not the same. Mistaking one for the other is particularly easy in con-
nection with open form, which when properly conceived is a dispensation
to reorder musical content, but which when seen in isolation can look like
a license to shuffle pages. This misreading may have contributed to an-
other common mistake—the assimilation of the substantive concept of in-
determinacy with ambiguity, which is indeed a property of notations.
Stockhausen was among the first to confuse these concepts when he used
the term “Vieldeutigkeit” in connection with graphically notated scores
throughout his “Musik und Graphik” lectures at the International Summer
Courses for New Music in 1959,92 but others have since been guilty of the
same error.93 Ambiguity is present when a symbol or group of symbols
carry two or more mutually inconsistent meanings. Consequently, ambigu-
ity can generate indeterminacy by licensing incompatible readings, but in-
determinacy can also be created in other ways—through the use of
generality, explicitly sanctioned optionality, and vagueness, for example.
Indeterminacy is frequently present without there being any ambiguity,
and wrongly equating the two concepts will result in canonical examples
of indeterminacy being classified incorrectly.94
The five works in Feldman’s Projection series are among the most fre-
quently cited examples of indeterminacy in music,95 yet they are not am-
biguous.96 The “graph” notation in which they are presented specifies
register as high, middle, or low, but no specific pitches are given and this

is the principal source of their indeterminacy. In ordinary discourse, the
terms “high,” “middle,” and “low” may be ambiguous in some contexts,
but they are not ambiguous here: “high” means “elevated,” not
“intoxicated,” for example. That said, Feldman’s register designations are
both general and vague: unlike “G]5,” which applies to a specific pitch,
“high” is a general term that applies to a range of pitches; unlike “G]5–
C8,” which indicates a specific range of pitches, “high” is vague, meaning
that there are borderline cases in which there is no definite answer to the
question of whether or not it applies.97
The Projections went unmentioned in Cage’s Darmstadt lectures, but
they did address Feldman’s Intersection 3. This composition is drawn from
a series of somewhat later, but similarly presented, works that specify
sounds less precisely. The treatment of pitch is comparable with that
found in the Projections, but in the Intersections the notation specifies that
performers should enter anywhere within indicated periods, with Feldman
adding the proviso that a player, having entered, should hold the sound
until the end of the period in which it occurs. Thus, the point of entry of a
sound is circumscribed but not specified, and this is also true of the
sound’s duration. The performer’s leeway is also increased by the indica-
tion that dynamics are “freely chosen.” Once again, there is no ambiguity:
in this case, the additional layers of indeterminacy are attributable to ex-
plicitly sanctioned optionality.
An example of ambiguity that generates indeterminacy appears in
Intersection 4, in which individual cells in Feldman’s grid-like presentation
are occasionally divided by a dashed vertical line, as shown in Example 1.
The instance lying farthest to the right is the focus of interest because it
contains two symbols (“A” and “4”) placed one on top of the other. This ar-
rangement is not found elsewhere in the score and not explained in the ac-
companying notes. Unless new evidence emerges that establishes Feldman’s
true intent, it is simply impossible to decide whether this unusual placement
reflects the restricted space available, in which case the intended combina-
tion was “A4,” a configuration that is rather common elsewhere in this par-
ticular score, or the only example of a disposition of symbols (“A” above
“4”) that is found in two earlier Intersections in which its meaning is
explained. The resulting ambiguity is attributable to the presence of marks
on the page that can be ascribed two incompatible meanings.98
This instance of ambiguity was almost certainly unintentional, but a
clearly intended example appears in Brown’s 4 Systems, in which the

Example 1. Morton Feldman, Intersection 4 (EP6960), page 1, lower system, excerpt. V
C
Copyright C. F. Peters Corporation, New York. Reproduced by kind permission of Peters

Edition Limited, London.
Example 2. John Cage, Winter Music (EP6775), page 4, excerpt. V C Copyright Henmar
Press, Inc., New York. Reproduced by kind permission of Peters Edition Limited, London.
explanatory notes state that the thicknesses of the given symbols indicate
“dynamics or clusters.” It is not always so easy to decide whether ambigu-
ity is present, however. Cage’s use of staves with two different clefs in
Winter Music, shown in Example 2, is a case in point.99 The pressing issue
is whether the excerpt includes a single sign with two different meanings,
in which case there is ambiguity, as Cage maintained,100 or two different
signs, each of which is unambiguous. If the staves had been unlabeled,
there would be no doubt that ambiguity is present, but the added clefs ap-
pear to change the situation by forcing the performer to read selectively,
with the two possible interpretations requiring a focus on different combi-
nations of marks on the page. These combinations share a common ele-
ment but are otherwise distinct. This feature of Winter Music seems
comparable with an aspect of Brown’s Twenty-Five Pages, in which each
page may be turned upside-down. The license to rotate pages in this way
creates optionality by generating a whole new set of signs, as shown in
Example 3, thereby forcing the performer to choose which set to play, but
it does not create ambiguity by conferring different meanings on the same
sign. Ambiguity is present in Twenty-Five Pages for another reason, how-
ever, because the introductory notes also state that the staves, which are,
in this case, unlabeled, “may be read as either treble or bass clef.”
Twenty-Five Pages, 4 Systems, Klavierstücke XI, and Winter Music all
exhibit “open form,” but this is another type of optionality, not a species
of ambiguity. Open form licenses the performer to reorder the given con-
tent by varying the sequence in which it is presented, but it does not
C Copyright Henry Litolff’s Verlag, Leipzig.
Example 3. Earle Brown, Twenty-Five Pages (EP11147), page 1 in both permitted orientations. V
Reproduced by kind permission of Peters Edition Limited, London.
Two Concepts of Indeterminacy
99

create ambiguity by assigning multiple meanings to individual symbols.

When A, B, and C are unambiguously specified, there is nothing ambigu-
ous about an instruction to sound A or B or C.
Genuinely non-prescriptive scores invite myriad interpretations, but

it is doubtful whether even these count as ambiguous. Cornelius Cardew’s
Treatise was originally published without explanatory notes, but in this
form its intricate graphic designs seem rightly regarded as tools for use in
creating scores or performances, not as elements in an ambiguous notation
carrying mutually inconsistent meanings. Years later, Treatise was reissued
in conjunction with a supplementary Treatise Handbook,101 an eclectic
compendium of notes, essays, and other materials connected with the
Treatise project, which casts light on Cardew’s evolving ideas about the in-
terpretation of his graphics. The handbook reveals two unchanging
aspects of Cardew’s conception: that pages be read from left to right in se-
quence and that performers actively interpret his notation, even if impro-
vising.102 Arguably, these fixed elements thereby became constraints,
changing the status of Cardew’s designs by giving them a genuinely nota-
tional dimension. This notational aspect is certainly ambiguous given the
considerable latitude that the fixed elements afford in interpreting
symbols.
The Vagueness of Indeterminacy

A possible weakness of the higher level procedural concept of indetermi-
nacy simpliciter, noted above, is the difficulty involved in ensuring that it
distinguishes uncontrolled aspects of indeterminate music from uncon-
trolled aspects of music that would not ordinarily be classified as indeter-
minate. An analogous issue arises in connection with the substantive
concept of indeterminacy, understood along the lines suggested by Cage’s
presentation. The difficulty is readily apparent in his comments on The
Art of Fugue, which state that “timbre and amplitude characteristics of the
material, by not being given, are indeterminate.” But what constitutes
“being given” in this context? Scores rarely demand specific instruments
(such-and-such a violin), meaning that timbre is almost always specified
only imprecisely through generic indications of instrument type, and the
standard notation of amplitudes is not only considerably less accurate,
but also vague. Cage’s persistent use of the terms “determined” and
“determinate” insinuates that absolute precision is the issue at stake, but
we cannot agree to this suggestion unless we are also prepared to accept
that all notated music is, strictly speaking, indeterminate. The suggestion
that timbre is given if instrument type (violin, viola etc.) is specified is ini-
tially credible, but the problem posed by amplitude is considerably less
tractable. The edict that amplitude is given if any guidance whatsoever is

provided fits with the wooliness of standard indications of dynamics, but
even so it seems too crude: surely indeterminacy might be present if only
occasional indications of amplitude are included. And given that verbal

indications of tempo are also vague, a similar issue undermines the specif-
icity of notated durations. The difficulty, in both cases, is where to draw
the line between standard and nonstandard degrees of imprecision.
A solution is to refuse to draw the line with exactitude, leaving us
free to insist that a composition instances the substantive concept if it
exhibits a lower-than-normal degree of precision. This raises the thorny is-
sue of how to characterize normality, but given that Wolff and Cage were
both addressing a phenomenon that emerged in the 1950s, the relevant
benchmark must be standard notational practices of that time. In many
cases, it will be quite obvious whether a notation is less than normally pre-
cise relative to prevailing norms in the 1950s, and only occasionally will
we encounter borderline cases for which it will prove impossible to decide.
These borderline cases are hallmarks of vagueness, but there is no disgrace
in a concept being vague if scientific precision is not required. A compara-
ble approach is feasible with the higher level procedural concept of inde-
terminacy simpliciter. By insisting that this is a product of a lower-than-
normal degree of control, judged from a 1950s perspective, it will usually
be easy to distinguish between aspects of compositional method that en-
gender this type of indeterminacy and those that do not. And where we
cannot distinguish between them, we need not try.
A corollary is that certain older forms of music, such as those utiliz-
ing neumes or inviting ornamentation, will also be classified as instances
of indeterminacy in respect to performance and the substantive concept of
indeterminacy. This clashes with the idea that indeterminacy, in and of it-
self, was an unprecedented innovation of postwar composers, but it is
hardly unacceptable for that reason.103 Postwar interest in imprecise indi-
cations seems to have emerged independently of these historical precur-
sors,104 but precursors they remain, even if the newer examples sometimes
featured original forms and unprecedentedly high degrees of imprecision.
Cage’s assessment of The Art of Fugue as indeterminate in respect to per-
formance suggests that he, for one, was comfortable with the idea that in-
determinacy had historical antecedents.
Notes
David Cline is Visiting Research Fellow in the Contemporary Music Research Unit at
Goldsmiths, University of London, where he also studied for his PhD. His work on
Morton Feldman has appeared in Twentieth-Century Music, Perspectives of New Music,
Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, and The Graph Music of Morton Feldman
(Cambridge University Press, 2016). His current research is focused on improvisation,
graphic notations, and indeterminacy. Email: [email protected].
I would like to thank Christian Wolff for answering my questions and sending me a

copy of an unpublished typescript.
1. Ekbert Faas, “Interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen held August 11, 1976,”
Interface 6 (1977): 187–204, at 196.
2. Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: A Biography, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber
and Faber, 1992), 68.
3. Meyer-Eppler delivered lectures in 1950–53 and 1959.
4. Werner Meyer-Eppler, “Das Klangfarbenproblem in der elektronischen Musik:
Vortrag IFNM Darmstadt,” Meyer-Eppler Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
5. Meyer-Eppler would go on to describe this theoretical construct in some detail in
a subsequent book: Grundlagen und Anwendungen der Informationstheorie (Berlin:
Springer, 1959), 25–28.
6. For “subjective acoustics,” see Dennis Gabor, “Acoustical Quanta and the
Theory of Hearing,” Nature 4044 (3 May 1947): 591–94, at 591.
7. Dennis Gabor, “Theory of Communication,” Journal of the Institute of Electrical
Engineers 93 (part 3), no. 26 (1946): 429–57, at 431; and Gabor, “Acoustical
Quanta,” 591.
8. Gabor, “Acoustical Quanta,” 591.
9. Ibid., 591–92.
10. Gabor, “Theory of Communication,” 429 and 433–34.
11. Gabor, “Acoustical Quanta,” 592–93.
12. Gabor, “Theory of Communication,” 432; and Gabor, “Acoustical Quanta,”
591.
13. Werner Heisenberg, “Uber€ den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen
Kinematik und Mechanik,” Zeitschrift für Physik 43 (1927): 172–98; and Werner
Heisenberg, “The Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Mechanics” [1927],
trans. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, in Quantum Theory and
Measurement, ed. John Archibald Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 62–84.
14. Gabor, “Acoustical Quanta,” 591–92. The bell-shaped envelope is imposed by
applying a Gaussian function.
15. Ibid., 592 (see Gabor’s Figure 2).
16. Ibid., 591.
17. Ibid., 592. For a diagrammatic representation of the matrix, see Gabor’s
Figure 3.
18. Stockhausen suggested that physics, phonetics, information theory, communica-
tion science, biology, sociology, parapsychology, and action painting also encouraged

the turn to statistical processes. See Faas, “Interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen,”
194–97. The role played by John Cage’s music in this shift in orientation is discussed
in Jennifer Iverson, “Statistical Form Amongst the Darmstadt School,” Music Analysis
33, no. 3 (2014): 341–87, at 361–65.
19. See, for example, C. D. Broad, “Indeterminacy and Indeterminism,” Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 10 (1931): 135–60; V. F. Lenzen,
“Indeterminism and the Concept of Physical Reality,” Journal of Philosophy 30, no. 11
(1933): 281–88, at 283 and 287–88; William Marias Malisoff, “An Examination of
the Quantum Theories III,” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1934): 398–408; James
Jeans, The New Background of Science, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1934), 237; J. W. A. Hickson, “Causality and Recent Physics,” Philosophical
Review 44, no. 6 (1935): 534–43, at 538–40; Gabor, “Theory of Communication,”
432; and R. D. Bradley, “Determinism or Indeterminism in Microphysics,” British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13, no. 51 (1962): 193–215, at 198 and 202.
20. Max Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of
Quantum Mechanics in Historical Perspective (New York: Wiley, 1974), 61.
21. John Backus, “Die Reihe: A Scientific Evaluation,” Perspectives of New Music 1,
no. 1 (1962): 160–71; and Leonard B. Meyer, Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and
Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994),
254–57. For a more sympathetic assessment, see M. J. Grant, Serial Music, Serial
Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2–3 and 244–46.
22. Herbert Eimert, Fritz Enkel, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Fragen der Notation
elektronischer Musik,” Technische Hausmitteilungen des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks
6, nos. 1–2 (1954): 52–54, at 53; and Herbert Eimert, Fritz Enkel, and Karlheinz
Stockhausen, “Problems of Electronic Music Notation” [1954], National Research
Council of Canada Technical Translation TT-612, trans. D. A. Sinclair (Ottawa:
National Research Council of Canada Library, 1956), 6.
23. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “De la Situation du Metier (Klangkomposition)” [1954,
in French], in Comment Passe Le Temps: Essais Sur la Musique 1952–1961, trans.
Christian Meyer (Geneva: Contrechamps Editions, 2017), 79–102, at 85.
24. Wolfgang Edward Rebner, “Amerikanische Experimentalmusik” [1954], in Im
Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946–
1966, vol. 3, ed. Gianmario Borio and Hermann Danuser (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Rombach, 1997), 178–89, at 184 and 188. An English translation of Rebner’s address
appears in Amy C. Beal, “Negotiating Cultural Allies: American Music in Darmstadt,
1946–1956,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 1 (2000): 105–39, at
128–35. For Rebner’s use of “indeterminate,” see pages 132 and 135.
25. Theodor W. Adorno, “Neue Musik heute” [1956], in Gesammelte Schriften, vol.
18, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Klaus Schultz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984),
124–33, at 133; and Theodor W. Adorno, “New Music Today” [1956], trans.
Wieland Hoban, in Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962, ed. Rolf Tiedemann
(London: Seagull Books, 2009), 384–400, at 400. Stockhausen’s flexibility in applying

serial methods is discussed in Martin Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 73 and 106–07.
26. Pierre Boulez, “Alea,” Nouvelle Revue Française 59 (1957): 839–57, at 845; and
Pierre Boulez, “Alea” [1957], trans. Stephen Walsh, in Stocktakings from an
Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thevenin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 26–38,
at 30.
27. Christian Wolff, “New and Electronic Music,” unpublished typescript ca. 1957.
28. Christian Wolff to David Cline, 18 July 2018 (email); and Christian Wolff,
Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952–2003 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2017), 17.
29. Wolff, “New and Electronic Music,” unpublished typescript ca. 1957, 2.
30. Ibid., 7.
31. Ibid., 7–8; and John Cage, “To Describe the Process of Composition Used in
Music for Piano 21–52” [1957], in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 60–61.
33. Christian Wolff, “New and Electronic Music” [1958], in Occasional Pieces, 11–
17.
34. Werner Heisenberg, Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science, trans. F. C. Hayes
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1952). Kurt and Helen Wolff co-founded Pantheon
Books.
35. Christian Wolff to David Cline, 27 November 2012 (email). In January 1958,
Scientific American published a lengthy article on the uncertainty principle and a sub-
stantial review of a text that argues against the operation of an “indeterminate mecha-
nism” at the deepest level of physical reality. Consequently, it seems reasonable to
assume that indeterminacy was at this time attracting a degree of public attention in
the United States. See George Gamow, “The Principle of Uncertainty,” Scientific
American 198, no. 1 (1958): 51–59; and James R. Newman, “Review of Causality and
Chance in Modern Physics by David Bohm,” Scientific American 198, no. 1 (1958):
111–16.
36. For Wolff’s own account of this development in his music, see “Interview with
Victor Schonfield” [1969], in Occasional Pieces, 37–42, at 40.
37. For Wolff’s earlier work that is indeterminate in respect to performance, see
David Cline, The Graph Music of Morton Feldman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016), 15–16 and 317. Wolff’s For Prepared Piano, composed in 1951, is a
notable example of his early experiments with chance. See Christian Wolff,
“Interview with James Saunders” [2009], in Occasional Pieces, 275–85, at 285.
38. For Cage’s own account of this development in his music, see “John Cage on
Teaching,” in William Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces: Notations and

Performances (New York: Routledge, 2010), 231–33, at 233; and Richard Kostelanetz,
ed., Conversing with Cage (London: Omnibus Press, 1989), 70–71 and 74.
39. Christian Wolff to David Cline, 14 July 2018 (email). At least one early com-
mentator linked Cage’s use of the term “indeterminacy” with contemporary physics:
Peter Yates, Twentieth Century Music: Its Evolution from the End of the Harmonic Era
into the Present Era of Sound (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968), 144. Morton
Feldman had previously dismissed this idea as follows: “Phooey!” Quoted in Harold
C. Schonberg, “The Far-Out Pianist,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1960, 49–54, at 51.
40. Cage quoted from Wolff’s article in his third Darmstadt lecture, subtitled
“Communication.” See John Cage, “Composition as Process: III. Communication,” in
Silence, 41–56, at 54.
41. For a list of some of those present, see Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies:
American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 96–97.
42. John Cage, “Composition as Process: II. Indeterminacy,” in Silence, 35–40.
43. For the polemical aims of Cage’s talk, see Rebecca Y. Kim, “In No Uncertain
Musical Terms: The Cultural Politics of John Cage’s Indeterminacy” (PhD diss.,
Columbia University, 2008), 128–207.
44. John Cage to Peter Yates, 28 December 1959, in The Selected Letters of John
Cage, ed. Laura Kuhn (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2016), 210–13,
at 211.
45. John Cage to Peter Yates, 19 May 1959, in The Selected Letters of John Cage, ed.
Kuhn, 203–05, at 205; and Heinz-Klaus Metzger, “John Cage, or Liberated Music”
[1959], in John Cage, ed. Julia Robinson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 1–16.
46. Hence, Martin Iddon’s cautious assessment of Cage’s presentation as explaining
“reasonably clearly what Cage meant by indeterminacy, at least that form of indeter-
minacy that might be found between composition and performance” (New Music at
Darmstadt, 203) and Rebecca Kim’s verdict that “indeterminacy was an imprecise and
polemical term, and by its inexact definition generated a swell of new issues” (“In No
Uncertain Musical Terms,” 28).
47. The following statement hints at his view: “Cage, Feldman and Brown’s use of
chance is concerned rather with the improbable and unpredictable, less with a more
generalized control of the musical result than with a more specific generating of incal-
culability.” Wolff, “New and Electronic Music” [1958], 13.
49. Wolff’s tendency to equate indeterminacy with unpredictability is evident in his

later writings and interviews. See, for example, “On Form” [1960], “Electricity and
Music” [1968], both in Occasional Pieces, 19–25, at 23, and 31–35, at 33, respectively;
and “Interview with Victor Schonfield,” 41.

50. See, for example, R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1970), 129; Vincent Tomas, “Creativity in Art,” Philosophical Review
7, no. 1 (1958): 1–15, at 2–4; and John Hospers, “Artistic Creativity,” Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 3, no. 3 (1985): 243–55, at 244. This view has been dis-
puted. See, for example, W. E. Kennick, “Creative Acts,” in Art and Philosophy:
Readings in Aesthetics, 2nd ed., ed. W. E. Kennick (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1979), 163–85, at 174–76; and Jeffrey Maitland, “Creativity,” Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism 34, no. 4 (1976): 397–409.
51. Whereas Wolff wrote of “indeterminacy in respect to performance,” Cage pre-
ferred to insert a possessive pronoun (“its performance”). Wolff’s formulation, which
is easier on the eye and ear, is utilized below unless Cage’s words are being quoted.
52. Cage, “Composition as Process: II,” 36–37.
53. Ibid., 36–38. Cage’s account of the flexible orientation differs from the one
given in the published edition of the score, issued in 1961, which states that the four
systems “may be played in any sequence, either side up, at any tempo(i). The continu-
ous lines from far left to far right define the outer limits of the keyboard.”
54. Cage, “Composition as Process: II,” 35. Gustav Leonhardt, writing in The Art of
Fugue: Bach’s Last Harpsichord Work (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), had previ-
ously argued that The Art of Fugue was intended for harpsichord, a view which, if cor-
rect, would undermine Cage’s assessment.
56. Ibid., 39.
57. Earlier in the same lecture, Cage had demonstrated a sensitivity to this point:
“Each act is virgin, even the repeated one, to refer to Rene Char’s thought” (ibid.,
36).
58. For Tudor’s methods, see John Holzaepfel, “David Tudor and the Performance
of American Experimental Music, 1950–1959” (PhD diss., City University of New
York, 1994); John Holzaepfel, “Painting by Numbers: The Intersections of Morton
Feldman and David Tudor,” in The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts: John
Cage, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varèse, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg, ed. Steven Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 159–72; Martin
Iddon, John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Cline, The Graph Music of
Morton Feldman, 264–91.
59. “Experimental Music: Doctrine” [1955] and “Experimental Music” [1958], both
in Silence, 13–17, at 17, and 7–12, at 10–11, respectively.
60. John Cage, “To Describe the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes
and Imaginary Landscape No. 4” [1952], in Silence, 57–59.
61. Earle Brown, [Untitled, on Indices], in Merce Cunningham, ed. James Klosty
(New York: Limelight Editions, 1986), 75–77, at 75; and Cage, “Composition as

Process: II,” 37.
63. “Experimental Music: Doctrine,” 13. Cage also reiterated the same definition in
writings that postdate his 1958 lectures. See, for example, “History of Experimental
Music in the United States” [1959], in Silence, 67–75, at 69.
64. “Composition as Process: I. Changes,” in Silence, 18–34, at 20–21; and
“Composition as Process: II,” 36.
65. Kim has argued that Cage’s lecture also drew on the ideas of George Brecht,
who was one of Cage’s students at the New School for Social Research. See “The
Formalization of Indeterminacy in 1958: John Cage and Experimental Composition at
the New School,” in John Cage, ed. Robinson, 141–70.
66. Cage, “Composition as Process: II,” 36.
67. Wolff, “New and Electronic Music,” unpublished typescript ca. 1957, 6–7; and
Wolff, “New and Electronic Music” [1958], 13–14.
68. Cage, “Composition as Process: II,” 36.
69. Cline, The Graph Music of Morton Feldman, 7, 108, 163, 182–89, and 256.
70. Cage, “Composition as Process: I,” 19–20.
71. Compare John Cage, “Forerunners of Modern Music” [1949], in Silence, 62–66,
at 62.
72. This is even though his damning assessment of Music of Changes proves that he
had lost interest in music that is only indeterminate in respect to composition and not
indeterminate in respect to performance.
73. For representative examples, see Victor Schonfield, “Indeterminate Scores,” The
Musical Times 110, no. 1514 (1969): 374–75; Barney Childs, “Indeterminacy,” in
Dictionary of Contemporary Music, 3rd ed., ed. John Vinton (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1974), 336; Terence J. O’Grady, “Aesthetic Value in Indeterminate Music,” The
Musical Quarterly 67, no. 3 (1981): 366–81; Paul Griffiths, The Thames and Hudson
Encyclopaedia of 20th-Century Music (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 96;
Robert P. Morgan, “Aleatory Music,” in The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed.
Don Randel (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 28;
David H. Cope, New Directions in Music, 5th ed. (Dubuque, IA: W. C. Brown, 1989),
148–71; William G. Harbinson, “Performer Indeterminacy and Boulez’s Third
Sonata,” Tempo 169 (1989): 16–20; Catherine M. Cameron, Dialectics in the Arts: The
Rise of Experimentalism in American Music (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 31–33, 41,
and 66; David Cope, Techniques of the Contemporary Composer (London: Schirmer,
1997), 161–67; and Angela Ida De Benedictis, “Indeterminacy and Open Form in the
United States and Europe: Freedom from Control vs. Control of Freedom,” in
Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction, 1900–2000, ed. Felix
Meyer, Carol J. Oja, Wolfgang Rathert, and Anne C. Shreffler (Suffolk, UK: Boydell
Press, 2014), 411–24, at 411.

74. For representative examples, see Cornelius Cardew, “Notation—Interpretation,
etc.,” Tempo 58 (1961): 21–33; Morton Feldman, “. . . Out of ‘Last Pieces,’” in New
York Philharmonic, One Hundred Twenty-Second Season 1963–64, The Avant-Garde,
Program V, 6–9 February 1964, program booklet, ed. Edward Downes, Philharmonic
Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, 6–9 February 1964, page G; David Behrman, “What
Indeterminate Notation Determines,” Perspectives of New Music 3, no. 2 (1965): 58–
73; Roger Reynolds, “Indeterminacy: Some Considerations,” Perspectives of New Music
4, no. 1 (1965): 136–40; Reginald Smith Brindle, The New Music: The Avant-Garde
Since 1945, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 60–80; Stefan Kostka,
Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1990), 295–96; David Revill, The Roaring Silence—John Cage: A Life (New York:
Arcade Publishing, 1992), 189–90; James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 108; Michael Nyman, Experimental
Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 57,
62, and 66–67; Arnold Whittall, Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 277; David W. Bernstein, “John Cage and
the ‘Aesthetic of Indifference,’” in The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts, ed.
Johnson, 113–33, at 119; Philip Thomas, “Determining the Indeterminate,”
Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 2 (2007): 129–40; Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre
Pieces, 20–21; Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2010); Cline, The Graph Music of Morton Feldman; David Clarke,
“Musical Indeterminacy and its Implications for Music Analysis: The Case of Cage’s
Solo for Piano,” Music Theory & Analysis 3, no. 11 (2016): 170–96, at 170; and Peter
O’Hagan, “‘Alea’ and the Concept of the ‘Work in Progress,’” in Pierre Boulez Studies,
ed. Edward Campbell and Peter O’Hagan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2016), 171–92.
75. Cage tossed coins in composing Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (Cage, “To Describe
the Process of Composition Used in Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape No. 4,”
57–59), so it is also indeterminate in respect to composition.
76. For “manipulations,” see the explanatory notes that accompany the score.
77. Clarke, “Musical Indeterminacy,” 187.
78. John Holzaepfel, “Cage and Tudor,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Cage,
ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 169–85, at
174–75.
79. Ibid., 175.
80. Ibid.
81. Two presentations of the Tacet edition have been published, but these are ma-
terially identical. Both are included in the “John Cage centennial edition” of 40 3300
(EP 6777c), which also contains one of Tudor’s reconstructions of Cage’s lost
manuscript.
82. This version was prepared by Cage in 1953, the year after the first performance
by Tudor. See Irwin Kremen’s introductory note in this edition of the score.

83. Although this edition was issued by Peters after Cage’s death, it cannot be side-
lined on that account. The same version of the score was published, with Cage’s bless-
ing, in Source: Music of the Avant Garde in the 1970s, but Cage’s proportional
notation was compromised by the pages being printed smaller than intended. See Kyle
Gann, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 40 3300 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2010), 179.
84. John Cage, interview by William Fetterman, 10 August 1990, quoted in
Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces, 72. See also John Cage, I–VI (Cambridge, MA:
€
Harvard University Press, 1990), 20–21; and David Tudor, “Uber John Cage: David
Tudor im Gespr€ach,” interview by Reinhard Oehlschl€agel, MusikTexte 69–70 (1997):
69–72, at 70.
85. Kostelanetz, ed., Conversing with Cage, 65.
86. Ibid.
87. “The title of this work is the total length in minutes and seconds of its perfor-
mance. At Woodstock, N.Y., August 29, 1952 [i.e. on the occasion of the world pre-
miere], the title was 40 3300 . . . . the movements may last any lengths of time.” This
implies that “40 3300 ” is not, strictly speaking, the title of the work, which is itself unti-
tled. Elsewhere, Cage confirmed that the work “can be any length” (I–VI, 26).
88. Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, 167–68.
89. This commonsensical distinction between compositional process and substance
has been disputed, not only in connection with music, but with reference to all art-
works. See Gregory Currie, An Ontology of Art (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, in asso-
ciation with the Scots Philosophical Club, 1989); and David Davies, Art as
Performance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). For a defense of the commonsense view of
music, see Julian Dodd, Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 167–200.
90. A concept presents its instances in a particular way, meaning that concepts that
apply to exactly the same instances are not thereby identical. For a philosophical the-
ory of concepts, see Christopher Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1992).
91. Talk of “indeterminate scores” and “indeterminate notation” encourages this
confusion. For this terminology, see the titles of the articles by Victor Schonfield and
David Behrman cited above.
92. Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 237. See also Karlheinz Stockhausen,
“Erfindung und Entdeckung: Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese” [1961], in Texte, vol. 1,
ed. Dieter Schnebel (Cologne: DuMont, 1963), 222–58, at 241.
93. Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, “Notation-Material and Form,” Perspectives of

New Music 4, no. 1 (1965): 39–44, at 43; Mauricio Kagel, “Translation-Rotation,”
Die Reihe 7, English ed. (1965): 32–60; Earle Brown, “The Notation and Performance
of New Music,” The Musical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (1986): 180–201; Clarke, “Musical
Indeterminacy,” 170–96; and Stephen Drury, “Then and Now: Changing Perspectives

on Performing Earle Brown’s Open Form Scores,” in Beyond Notation: The Music of
Earle Brown, ed. Rebecca Y. Kim (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017),
231–48.
94. For discussion of a comparable assimilation in literary theory, see Timothy
Bahti, “Ambiguity and Indeterminacy: The Juncture,” Comparative Literature 38, no. 3
(1986): 209–23. Bahti maintains that “texts are ambiguous and interpretations are
indeterminate” (213).
95. Childs, “Indeterminacy,” 337; Smith Brindle, The New Music, 60–61; Robert P.
Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 365–66; and De
Benedictis, “Indeterminacy and Open Form,” 415.
96. For the use of the term “graphs” in connection with these works, see Cline, The
Graph Music of Morton Feldman, 3.
97. Feldman’s explanatory notes state that the “limits” of the given ranges (high,
middle, and low) “may be freely chosen by the player,” but in saying this he did not
mean that performers have free rein. His labels carry absolute connotations that he
must have expected them to observe. Ibid., 269–72.
98. The corresponding cell in the only surviving sketch of Intersection 4, which forms
part of the Morton Feldman Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation, includes “P2”
written above “A4.” Although the juxtaposition of “A” and “4” in the sketch argues
in favor of reading the “A” above “4” in the published edition as “A4,” the placement
of “P2” above “A4” argues in favor of the contrary thesis that the vertical arrange-
ment of “A” and “4” in the published edition is itself meaningful. For other examples
of unintended ambiguity in Feldman’s graph music, see ibid., 30–31 and 100.
99. Cage also used this notation in several places in his Solo for Piano, which forms
an extractable part of Concert for Piano and Orchestra.
100. The explanatory notes with the score state: “The single staff is provided with
two clefs. Where these differ, ambiguity obtains.”
101. Cornelius Cardew, Treatise Handbook (London: Edition Peters, 1971).
102. See David Cline, “Treatise and the Tractatus,” Journal of the Royal Musical
Association (forthcoming).
103. Pace Clarke, “Musical Indeterminacy,” 193–95.
104. For the genesis of postwar enthusiasm for indeterminacy, see Cline, The Graph
Music of Morton Feldman, 9–50, 104–33, and 317–19.
Copyright of Musical Quarterly is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.

Two Concepts of Indeterminacy in Music

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Two Concepts of Indeterminacy in Music

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Two Concepts of Indeterminacy in Music

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What are the two concepts of indeterminacy discussed in the text?

What are the two concepts of indeterminacy discussed in the text?

What was Gabor's disagreement with the standard account of hearing?

What was Gabor's disagreement with the standard account of hearing?

Two Concepts of Indeterminacy

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

In an interview recorded in 1976, Karlheinz Stockhausen looked back on

mean square deviations of the corresponding energy distributions from the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

This would explain why a revised version, published in Audience magazine

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

American phenomenon,43 Cage’s lectures were brilliantly crafted and, in-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

“New and Electronic Music”

It is characteristic of any sound produced according to a set of instructions,

Hence indeterminacy is unpredictability: indeterminacy in respect to com-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

degree of foreknowledge involved in composing the work that is not inde-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

“Composition as Process II: Indeterminacy”

performance.”51 His judgment was afﬁrmative in connection with

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its

but unmistakable, implication was that a composition is indeterminate in

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

This is a lecture on composition which is indeterminate with respect to its

This yields two new preconditions of being indeterminate in respect to

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

he conceived of it in terms of the actually unforeseen. The latter is consid-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

idiosyncratic conception of being “determined” in connection with

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

The Procedural Concept of Indeterminacy

volume controls, loosens the composer’s authority in another way, by stip-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

The Substantive Concept of Indeterminacy

speciﬁcations, to what is notated: a composition is indeterminate if, and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Copyright C. F. Peters Corporation, New York. Reproduced by kind permission of Peters

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

create ambiguity by assigning multiple meanings to individual symbols.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

The Vagueness of Indeterminacy

tractable. The edict that amplitude is given if any guidance whatsoever is

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

49. Wolff’s tendency to equate indeterminacy with unpredictability is evident in his

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019

93. Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, “Notation-Material and Form,” Perspectives of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/102/1/82/5528292 by 81695661, OUP on 11 October 2019