I have quoted Cage at length, because of his nearness to Zen aesthetics, and the clarity with which it is expressed. Cage's conception of music differs from that of the formalists in that he does not feel the need for any musical idea as such. The sounds themselves are to be listened to aesthetically. The difference between noise and music is in the approach of the audience. Roughly stated, noise is heard, music is listened to; this is not a general definition, but the subjectivism should be clear.

"There are no symbols here to confuse you" Just the aesthetic object, to be contemplated for its own sake.

When we read Cage's manifesto on music, his connection with Zen becomes clear:

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music
nothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of music
nothing is accomplished by playing a piece of music (Cage 1961:xii)

This reads as if a quote from a Zen Master: "in the last resort nothing gained." (Fung, 1952: II, 401). Cage studied Zen with Daistez Suzuki when the master was lecturing at Columbia University in New York. Thus we see that Cage has consciously applied principles of Zen to solve his personal aesthetic problem. He does not try to superimpose his will in the form of structure or predetermination in any form.

Cage has, in fact, created a method of composition from Zen aesthetics. It was originally a synthetic method, deriving inspiration from elements of Zen art: the swift brush strokes of Sesshu and the sumi-e painters which leave happenstance ink blots and stray scratches in their wake, the unpredictable glaze patterns of the cha no yu potters, the eternal quality of the rock gardens, the great open spaces in the paintings of Wang Wei and Mu Ch'i. Then, isolating the element of chance as vital to artistic creation which is to remain in harmony with the universe, he selected the oracular I Ching (Classic of Changes, an ancient Chinese book) as a means of providing random information which he translated into musical notations. Later, he moved away from the I Ching to more abstract methods of indeterminate composition: scores based on star maps, and scores entirely silent, or with long spaces of silence, in which the only sounds are supplied by nature or by the uncomfortable audience. "Just let the sounds be themselves."

Many young composers and painters have followed in Cage's footsteps, and the school of chance art found the necessity of setting up categories to properly delimit the various types of chance composition. These categories are at present three in number and are described as follows.

1) Music indeterminate of composition. This category includes pieces created through the use of some random system which effectively isolates the composer's will from the final manuscript. The piece, as notated by the composer is then performed, as accurately as possible, by the

2) Music indeterminate of performance. This category includes pieces which make use of improvisation, and has taken much from Jazz. The performer is given freedom in interpreting the score.

3) Combinations, in varying degrees, of categories 1 and 2. The third category is the most recent, and the most populated. As might be expected, violent reactions have issued from conservative quarters, and Alan Watts was moved to protest (1959:11 14):

Today there are western artists avowedly using Zen to justify the indiscriminate framing of simply anything--blank canvases, totally silent music, torn up bits of paper dropped on a board and stuck where they fall, or dense masses of mangled wire. The work of the composer John Cage is rather typical of this tendency. In the name of Zen, he has forsaken his earlier and promising work with the "prepared piano," to confront audiences with Ampex taperecorders simultaneously bellowing forth random noises. There is, indeed, a considerable therapeutic value in allowing oneself to be deeply aware of any sight or sound that may arise. For one thing, it brings to mind the marvel of seeing and hearing as such. For another, the profound willingness to listen to or gaze upon anything at all frees the mind from fixed preconceptions of beauty, creating, as it were, a free space in which altogether new forms and relationships may emerge. But this is therapy; it is not yet art ....

Just as the skilled photographer often amazes us with his lighting and framing of the most unlikely subjects, so there are painters and writers in the West, as well as in modern Japan, who have mastered the authentically Zen art of controlling accidents . . . The real genius of Chinese and Japanese Zen artists in their use of controlled accidents goes beyond the discovery of fortuitous beauty. It lies in being able to express, at the level of artistry, the realization of that ultimate standpoint from which "anything goes" and at which "all things are on one suchness." The mere selection of any random shape to stick in a frame simply confuses the metaphysical and the artistic domains; it does not express the one in terms of the other.