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Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities. Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
Dice (the plural of die, from Old French de, from Latin datum something given or played [1]) are small polyhedral objects, usually cubical, used for generating random numbers or other symbols. ...
For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ...
An aspect of music is any characteristic, dimension, or element taken as a part or component of music. ...
The word random is used to express lack of order, purpose, cause, or predictability in non-scientific parlance. ...
The term became known to European composers through lectures by acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his definition, "aleatoric processes are such processes which have been fixed in their outline but the details of which are left to chance"[1]. Acoustics is a branch of physics and is the study of sound (mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids). ...
Werner Meyer-Eppler (1913–1960), physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist, and information theorist, was born on 30 April 1913 in Antwerp. ...
Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt new music summer courses), held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works. ...
This does not cite any references or sources. ...
Early precedents
An early genre of composition that could be considered a precedent for aleatoric compositions were the Musikalische Würfelspiele or Musical Dice Games, popular in the late 18th and early 19th century. (One such dice game is attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.) These games consisted of a sequence of musical measures, for which each measure had several possible versions, and a procedure for selecting the precise sequence based on the throwing of a number of dice. A Musikalisches Würfelspiel (Musical dice game) was a system for using dice to randomly generate music (long before computer systems). ...
Dice (the plural of die, from Old French de, from Latin datum something given or played [1]) are small polyhedral objects, usually cubical, used for generating random numbers or other symbols. ...
“Mozart†redirects here. ...
In musical terminology, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration. ...
Somewhat related to chance music is composer Alan Hovhaness's use of what he called the "spirit murmur" (beginning with his 1944 piano concerto Lousadzak), in which instruments repeat a melodic or rhythmic phrase for a certain amount of time in an uncoordinated fashion.[citation needed] Similar textures had been employed by Charles Ives, as early as The Unanswered Question (1908).[citation needed] Alan Hovhaness with an Indonesian rebab Alan Hovhaness (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent. ...
The term concerto (plural concertos or concerti) usually refers to a musical work in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra. ...
This photo from around 1913 shows Ives in his day job. He was the director of a successful insurance agency. ...
// The Unanswered Question American composer, Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) composed many classical pieces. ...
American composer John Cage's Music of Changes (1951) is the first piece to be conceived largely through random procedures (Randel 2002, 17). For the Mortal Kombat character, see Johnny Cage. ...
Modern usage The French composer Pierre Boulez was largely responsible for popularizing the term, using it to describe works that give the performer certain liberties with regard to the sequencing and repetition of parts, an approach pioneered by avant-garde American composer-theorist Henry Cowell in his Mosaic Quartet (String Quartet No. 3, 1935). The term was intended by Boulez to distinguish his work from pieces composed through the application of chance operations by John Cage and Cage's aesthetic of indeterminate music or indeterminacy.[citation needed] Pierre Boulez Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjÉ›Ê.buˈlÉ›z/) (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music. ...
Henry Cowell (March 11, 1897 - December 10, 1965) was an American composer, musical theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. ...
For the Mortal Kombat character, see Johnny Cage. ...
Early examples of aleatoric music include Klavierstück XI (1956) by Karlheinz Stockhausen, which features 19 elements to be performed in changing sequences; certain orchestral works of Alan Hovhaness (from 1958) and Witold Lutosławski (from after 1959) which contain passages where the musical content is not precisely dictated (Hovhaness called it 'controlled chaos', Lutosławski 'ad libitum'); and in some works by Krzysztof Penderecki characteristic sequences are repeated quickly, producing a kind of oscillating sound. The Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces) are a series of compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. ...
Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. ...
Alan Hovhaness with an Indonesian rebab Alan Hovhaness (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent. ...
Witold Lutosławski at his home. ...
Krzysztof Penderecki. ...
There has been considerable confusion of the terms aleatory and indeterminate / chance music. One of Cage's pieces, HPSCHD, itself composed using chance procedures, uses music from Mozart's Musikalisches Würfelspiel, referred to above, as well as original music. He also generally used coin-tossing and other procedures depending on designs involving a pre-defined number of choices to be made.[citation needed] Still, both the aesthetic aims as well as the number of elements controlled by chance make the two methods clearly different. Douglas Hofstadter, writing in Gödel, Escher, Bach,[citation needed] thus punningly characterises some of the musical compositions of John Cage by using the acronym CAGE to stand for Composition of Aleatorically Generated Elements, in contrast to a Beautiful Aperiodic Crystal of Harmony (or BACH). Coin flipping or coin tossing is the practice of throwing a coin in the air to resolve a dispute between two parties. ...
Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ...
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American academic. ...
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize (1980)-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, published in 1979 by Basic Books. ...
For the Mortal Kombat character, see Johnny Cage. ...
“Bach†redirects here. ...
"Open form" chance music Open form is a term sometimes used for mobile or polyvalent musical forms, where the order of movements or sections is indeterminate or left up to the performer. The term musical form refers to two related concepts: the type of composition (for example, a musical work can have the form of a symphony, a concerto, or other generic type -- see Multi-movement forms below) the structure of a particular piece (for example, a piece can be written in...
In music, a movement is a large division of a larger composition or musical form. ...
In music a section is a complete, but not independent musical idea (Bye 1993, p. ...
“Instrumentalist†redirects here. ...
Roman Haubenstock-Ramati composed a series of influential "mobiles" such as Interpolation (1958). However, "open form" in music is also used in the sense defined by the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (Renaissance und Barock, 1888) to mean a work which is fundamentally incomplete, represents an unfinished activity, or points outside of itself. In this sense, a "mobile form" can be either "open" or "closed". An example of a closed mobile musical composition is Stockhausen's Momente (1962-64/69). Terry Riley's In C (1964) was composed of 53 short sequences; each member of the ensemble can repeat a given sequence as many times as he or she chooses before going on to the next (similar to Hovhaness's "spirit murmer", only with a fixed pulsing rhythm), making the details of each performance of In C unique though, because the overall course is fixed, it is a closed form. Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (born 27 February 1919 in Kraków; died 3 March 1994 in Vienna) was a composer and music editor who worked in Kraków, Tel Aviv und Vienna. ...
Heinrich Wölfflin (June 21, 1864 – July 19, 1945) was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles (painterly vs. ...
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969. ...
Terry Riley – (Portrait by Betty Freeman) Terry Riley (born 24 June 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school. ...
In C is an aleatoric musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for any number of people, although a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work[1]. As its title suggests, it is in the key of C, the simplest key...
See also Look up aleatory in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into algorithmic music. ...
Stochastic, from the Greek stochos or goal, means of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural; random. ...
Indeterminacy in music, which began with experimental music composer John Cage in 1958, came to refer to the (mostly American) movement which grew up around him. ...
Notes - ^ Meyer-Eppler, Werner: "Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme", Die Reihe 1, 1955, p.22.
Sources - Randel, Don Michael. (2002). The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians. ISBN 0-674-00978-9.
- Wölfflin, Heinrich. (1888). Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung der Barockstils in Italien. Munich: T. Ackermann. English edition: Renaissance and Baroque. Translated by Kathrin Simon, with an introduction by Peter Murray. London: Collins, 1964; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.
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