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The ambivalence of the interplay between regulation and empowerment has shaped art, education, and scientific discourse for centuries. Parallel to communication and systems theory, game theory gained influence during the Cold War, enabling the analysis and regulation of indeterminate processes. John Cage and his circle took up these new theories and applied them to aesthetic processes, institutions, and even discourse formats. A key event was Composition as Process, three lecture-performances by Cage and David Tudor entitled Changes, Indeterminacy, and Communication at the Darmstadt Summer Courses in 1958.

Michel Roth's study develops a set of game- and system-theoretical tools that can be used to describe and critically compare musical indeterminacy and the associated practices and aesthetic positions from both a music-analytical and a discourse-analytical perspective. These tools are applied historiographically and systematically to numerous case studies from the 1950s to the 1970s, e.g., David Tudor, Sylvano Bussotti, Henri Pousseur, Iannis Xenakis, Vinko Globokar, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Robert Rauschenberg, George Brecht, the group Selten gehörte Musik, John Zorn, and Hans Wüthrich. These aesthetic practices imply, on the one hand, metaphors of liberation ("letting go of the game") and, on the other hand, "control mechanisms disguised as games," as critically discussed in McKenzie Wark's Gamer Theory or Mary Flanagan's Radical Game Design.

In addition to an innovative methodology, the book taps into numerous new sources and builds a bridge to current applications of play, game theory, and game design in composition, improvisation, performance, and music research.

Michel Roth (born 1976) is a composer and professor of composition, music theory, and artistic research at the Basel School of Music (FHNW). He researches and publishes on the musical application of game theory and cybernetics (doctorate at the University of Basel), music as a model of artistic collaboration (Dieter Roth), organology of contemporary music, and alpine sound sociology ("Singende Seile" [Singing Ropes]).

Open Access