Imaginary Landscape No.5 (1952)

The piece is a collage of fragments from long-playing records recorded on tape. In Cage's realization, he mostly used jazz recordings, partly because the dance had a character that suggested popular music, and partly as a way of overcoming his own aversion to jazz. The realization was made with David Tudor, with technical assistance from Bebe and Louis Barron. The score is a block-graph, wherein each square equals 3” of tape. In total, there are 8 tracks, made from the 42 selected recordings. Duration and amplitude are notated, but there is no indication of what recordings (or what kind of recordings) should be used. The compositional method was use of the I Ching, creating a chart work with a five to five structure.