Music: Composing by Knucklebone

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Playing the Raisins. No two aleatory composers get their random results in quite the same way. Cage, who is regarded as particularly ingenious, determined the notes for his Music for Piano by following the pattern of the "imperfections in the paper on which the music was written." Germany's Karlheinz Stockhausen, who is perhaps the most influential of Europe's aleatory composers, instructs performers to play any portion of his music that their eyes first fall on. His Cycle, for one percussionist, has spirally bound pages to make it simpler for the performer to begin or end wherever he wants, play back-to-front, or even turn the score upside down. Pianist David Tudor, leading performer of aleatory scores, is so accustomed to their weird notation systems that, according to Polish-born Composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. he can "play the raisins in a slice of fruitcake." The heaviest concentration of aleatory composers is in Germany, where—in addition to Stockhausen—South Korean Composer Nam June Paik (Homage to John Cage), and the German Hans Otte (Tropism I, II) and Austrian Friedrich Cerha (Movements) all preach the gospel of chance. France has Greek-born Composer lannis Xenakis and Italy Composer Sylvano Bussotti. who has written, among other things, a piano piece in which the keys are to be touched but not depressed.

The word has even spread to Eastern Europe, where some real live Polish composers named Witold Lutoslawski and Wlodzimierz Kotonski produced chance pieces for last fall's Warsaw festival.

Although more young composers join the aleatory ranks every year, most critics denounce the movement as fraudulent, or misguided, or both. Staying one step ahead of his critics. Senior Statesman Cage is already proclaiming aleatory music passe —he prefers to think that his own brand of "indeterminacy" is the ultimate in pure chance. But he will have to go some to surpass English Composer Cornelius Cardew, 26, who in his Octet '61 for Jasper Johns* includes a vague injunction to "Do something completely different," or Argentine-born Mauricio Kagel, 30, who in his Sonant, made himself obsolete.

His opening advice to performers: "The player may mimic his part, or rebel against it entirely." Happy to oblige.