CHANCE – used by Cage to free composition from the expression of his own taste.  Cage developed a number of techniques which used chance operations to replace the composer's CHOICES as means of determining the continuity and detail of a piece, thus fundamentally re-defining the role of the composer.  He came to express it thus:  “I decided that rather than making choices, I would ask questions.”  This approach frees sounds to express their own nature rather than the desire or will of the composer. The DUCHAMP TRAIN used in Two⁶ is one way of putting chance operations to use in the selection of pitches; simpler forms of chance were used to make selections from the GAMUT of natural harmonics used in One^lO. The MESOSTIC technique behind Eight Whiskus and the IMITATIONS found in the MATERIAL of Two⁶ use chance to transform pre-existing material.  Chance can be incorporated into the compositional process, left to the PERFORMER‘s discretion, or even incorporated into the material itself.  There is a certain amount of indeterminacy built into any sustained note on the violin; the harmonics which make up One^lO are especially susceptible to unpredictable fluctuations of tone. SILENCE, in a Cage work, is always populated by the chance occurrence of unintended sounds.