A year with The Seasons

a generative musical year-clock, after John Cage (1947)

John Cage built The Seasons from a fixed palette of chords (the gamut) and a nine-part rhythmic structure following the traditional Indian view of the year: winter as quiescence, spring as creation, summer as preservation, fall as destruction.

This piece extracts the gamut and its recurring phrases from the music, then lets them recur and recombine in real time, mapped to the actual calendar so the seasons play in their seasons. It is a generative instrument: what Cage would have called an indeterminate piece, different at every hearing, applying chance to the gamut of his 1947 score. It composes after Cage's method rather than replaying it, and plays only the present moment: come back tomorrow and the rules will have moved through the season by one day.

The ring shows Cage's nine sections, each sized by his proportions and colored by its affect; the hand marks now. The pulse at the center is the engine's heartbeat: one flash for each musical decision, quick in summer, nearly still in winter.

piano: Salamander Grand via Tone.js