Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

subtracting each number in turn from a constant of such value that the resulting series introduces
no numbers not already given, an inversion results (in this case the constant is 6): I � 1,
5, 4, 2. A rotational procedure applied to P and I yields the third and fourth set forms: Rp �
2, 4, 5, 1; Ri � 4, 2, 1, 5.
Mathematics—or more correctly arithmetic—is used as a compositional device, resulting
in the most literal sort of “programme music,” but one whose course is determined
by a numerical rather than a narrative or descriptive “Programme.”
—Milton Babbit
The composer is freed from individual note-to-note decisions which are self-generating
within the system he devises. The music thus attains a high degree of conceptual coherence,
even if it sometimes sounds “aimless and fragmentary.”
The adaptation of the serial concept of composition by incorporating the more general
notion of permutation into structural organization—a permutation the limits of which
are rigorously defined in terms of the restrictions placed on its self-determination constitutes
a logical and fully justified development, since bothmorphology and rhetoric
are governed by one and the same principle.
—Pierre Boulez
The form itself is of very limited importance, it becomes the grammar for the total work.
—Sol LeWitt
Language can be approached in either of two ways, as a set of culturally transmitted behavior
patterns shared by a group or as a system conforming to the rules which constitute
its grammar.
—Joseph Greenberg, Essays in Linguistics
In linguistic analysis, language is often considered as a system of elements without assigned
meanings (“uninterpreted systems”). Such systems are completely permutational, having
grammatical but not semantic rules. Since there can be no system without rules of arrangement,
this amounts to the handling of language as a set of probabilities. Many interesting
mel bochner the serial attitude 25