“The title is a double pun.The score is the first that John Cage devised allowing the hexagrams of the Ching to fully determine how the music would proceed, event by event, gesture by gesture the musical details (pitch, duration, dynamics, density, tempi) being painstakingly, albeit fortuitously, derived through point-by-point consultation from charts of possibilities designed by the composer. (Christian Wolff, Cage's young friend and musical associate, had presented Cage with a copy of the book, which had been published by his father, Kurt Wolff, I Ching = Book of Changes = Music of Changes.) Too, the music, as an entity, is constantly changing. There is no guiding sense of continuity of line, rhythm, speed, or texture.The relationship between events the glue which holds the music together can be neither tonally nor structurally defined. Change appears to be its only unchanging characteristic, its ultimate identity”. Art Lange
