Classical Music Secrets: What is Chance Music ?  During the early 20th century, composers began making use of scores that consisted of purely text. The Dada artists enjoyed doing this, and they were followed by various movements that used chance and experimentalism to create a new series of sounds and music, like the Fluxus movement in the mid-20th century. There are many ways that a composer can include chance elements, from John Cage's use of random radio stations in his work Radio Music to allowing the performers to improvise and even choose the instruments or melodic materials. As a composer I use chance in a variety of ways. I might include a section with no time or rhythm to counter an extremely rhythmic section of music or leave the instrumentation up to the musicians. I may include improvisation from the performers or audience. In my work Conversations on a Bus I used chance operations that gave some direction to the performance artists . Conversations on th...