DUCHAMP TRAIN – from the Erratum Musical (1913) of Marcel Duchamp, in which names of notes are written onto balls poured into a funnel.  The funnel empties out into the freight cars of a moving toy railroad train, where each car represents one measure of time.  For the composition of Two⁶, Cage adapted this process to his own ends: computerized CHANCE operations mimic the action of the funnel and train, and rather than measures of time, the train cars are taken as encompassing a range of pitches (seven chromatically adjacent notes in the violin, eleven in the piano).  From each car Cage's chance operations select a given number of pitches (one each for the violin and from zero to five for the piano). The result in each case is a total GAMUT of pitches which is given on separate unbound pages in the score.  From these pitch collections the PERFORMERS make selections which are then used to express the several TIME BRACKETS – by the violin as sustained double-stops, by the piano as slowly ASCENDING figures. In Duchamp’s original instructions, the artist specifies that the resulting music be performed on an instrument “where the virtuoso intermediary has been suppressed.” Cage's playing instructions for Two⁶ reflect this by requiring the pianist to play “pppp as softly as possible, giving no sense of periodicity (depress key silently until you feel the escapement clearing; knowing where that is, play the piano on the edge of audibility)”, and the violinist to play “pppp as softly as possible (nearly inaudible) using from the gamut of pitches given any two, using harmonics or not, but sustained with imperceptible bowing.”