The York Research Database

A contextual analysis of three compositions—One anti-personnel type-CBU bomb . . . by Philip Corner, ‘Majority’ by Charles Ives, and Lecture on the Weather by John
Cage—reveals that each is ‘impossible’. Each manifests its impossibility in a different domain: moral, physical and perceptual. But the three scores were each resituated by comments made by the composers, independent of the scores; and these comments make these ‘experimental’ works viable as expressions of aspiration rather than mere achievements.