Ever Heard of Chance Music? :: essays research papers

unpredictable symphony (& vitamin A257l&275&601tr&275) Lat. alea=dice game, music in which sections traditionally goaded by the composer argon de considerationined either by a subprogram of random selection chosen by the composer or by the solve of choice by the doer(s). At the pieceal stage, pitches, durations, dynamics, and so forth are made functions of playing card drawings, dice throwings, or mathematical laws of chance, the last mentioned with the possible aid of a computer. Those elements usually left to the performers discretion embarrass the order of execution of sections of a work, the possible exclusion of such sections, and indispensable interpretation of temporal and spatial pitch relations. Also called chance music, aleatory music has been produced in abundance since 1945 by several composers, the most guiding light being behind Cage, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis.Aleatoric (or aleatory) music or composition, is music where nearly element of the composition is left to chance. The term became known to European composers by the lectures which acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler held at Darmstadt Summer School in the beginning of the fifties. According to his definition, "aleatoric processes are such processes which have been fixed in their outline but the detail of which are left to chance".The word alea means "dice" in Latin, and the term has become known as referring to a chance element being applied to a limited number of possibilities, a mode employed by European composers who felt more bound than the Americans by tradition and who stressed the importance of compositional control, as opposed to indefinity and chance where possibilities tend not to be finite and which is an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.The term was used by the French composer Pierre Boulez to describe full treatment where the performer was given certain liberties with regard to the order and repetition of parts of a musical work. The term w as intended by Boulez to distinguish his work from works composed through the application of chance operations by John Cage and his aesthetic of indeterminacy - see indeterminate music. Other examples of aleatoric music are Klavierstck XI by Stockhausen which features a number of elements to be performed in changing sequences and characteristic sequences to be repeated fast, producing a special salmagundi of oscillating sound, in orchestral works of Lutoslawski and Penderecki.An early genre of composition that could be considered a precedent for aleatoric compositions were the Musikalische Wrfelspiele or Musical cube Games, popular in the late 18th and early 19th century.