Aleatoric music

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,
and/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.

The term became known to European

composers through lectures by acoustician
Werner Meyer-Eppler at the Darmstadt
International Summer Courses for New Music Karlheinz Stockhausen lecturing on Klavierstück XI at
in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his Darmstadt, July 1957
definition, "a process is said to be aleatoric ... if
its course is determined in general but
depends on chance in detail" (Meyer-Eppler 1957, 55). Through a confusion of Meyer-Eppler's
German terms Aleatorik (noun) and aleatorisch (adjective), his translator created a new English
word, "aleatoric" (rather than using the existing English adjective "aleatory"), which quickly became
fashionable and has persisted (Jacobs 1966). More recently, the variant "aleatoriality" has been
introduced (Roig-Francolí 2008, 340).

Contents
History
Early precedents
Modern usage
Types of indeterminate music
Open form music
Stochastic music
Film music
See also
References
External links

History

Early precedents
Compositions that could be considered a precedent for aleatory composition date back to at least the
late 15th century, with the genre of the catholicon, exemplified by the Missa cuiusvis toni of Johannes
Ockeghem. A later genre was the Musikalisches Würfelspiel or musical dice game, 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 (Boehmer 1967, 9–47).

The French artist Marcel Duchamp composed two pieces between 1913 and 1915 based on chance
operations. One of these, Erratum Musical written for three voices, was eventually published in 1934.
Two of his contemporaries, Francis Picabia and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, also experimented
with chance composition, these works being performed at a Festival Dada staged at the Salle Gaveau
concert hall, Paris, on 26 May 1920. American composer John Cage's Music of Changes (1951) was
"the first composition to be largely determined by random procedures" (Randel 2002, 17), though his
indeterminacy is of a different order from Meyer-Eppler's concept. Cage later asked Duchamp: "How
is it that you used chance operations when I was just being born?" (Lotringer 1998,).

Modern usage

The earliest significant use of aleatory features is found in many of the compositions of American
Charles Ives in the early 20th century. Henry Cowell adopted Ives's ideas during the 1930s, in such
works as the Mosaic Quartet (String Quartet No. 3, 1934), which allows the players to arrange the
fragments of music in a number of different possible sequences. Cowell also used specially devised
notations to introduce variability into the performance of a work, sometimes instructing the
performers to improvise a short passage or play ad libitum (Griffiths 2001). Later American
composers, such as Alan Hovhaness (beginning with his Lousadzak of 1944) used procedures
superficially similar to Cowell's, in which different short patterns with specified pitches and rhythm
are assigned to several parts, with instructions that they be performed repeatedly at their own speed
without coordination with the rest of the ensemble (Farach-Colton 2005). Some scholars regard the
resultant blur as "hardly aleatory, since exact pitches are carefully controlled and any two
performances will be substantially the same" (Rosner and Wolverton 2001) although, according to
another writer, this technique is essentially the same as that later used by Witold Lutosławski (Fisher
2010). Depending on the vehemence of the technique, Hovhaness's published scores annotate these
sections variously, for example as “Free tempo / humming effect” (Hovhaness 1944, 3) and “Repeat
and repeat ad lib, but not together” (Hovhaness 1958, 2).

In Europe, following the introduction of the expression "aleatory music" by Meyer-Eppler, the French
composer Pierre Boulez was largely responsible for popularizing the term (Boulez 1957).

Other early European examples of aleatory music include Klavierstück XI (1956) by Karlheinz
Stockhausen, which features 19 elements to be performed in a sequence to be determined in each case
by the performer (Boehmer 1967, 72). A form of limited aleatory was used by Witold Lutosławski
(beginning with Jeux Vénitiens in 1960–61) (Rae 2001), where extensive passages of pitches and
rhythms are fully specified, but the rhythmic coordination of parts within the ensemble is subject to
an element of chance.

There has been much 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.

Types of indeterminate music

Some writers do not make a distinction between aleatory, chance, and indeterminancy in music, and
use the terms interchangeably (Griffiths 2001; Joe and Song 2002, 264; Roig-Francolí 2008, 280).
From this point of view, indeterminate or chance music can be divided into three groups: (1) the use
of random procedures to produce a determinate, fixed score, (2) mobile form, and (3) indeterminate
notation, including graphic notation and texts (Griffiths 2001).

The first group includes scores in which the chance element is involved only in the process of
composition, so that every parameter is fixed before their performance. In John Cage’s Music of
Changes (1951), for example, the composer selected duration, tempo, and dynamics by using the I
Ching, an ancient Chinese book which prescribes methods for arriving at random numbers (Joe and
Song 2002, 268). Because this work is absolutely fixed from performance to performance, Cage
regarded it as an entirely determinate work made using chance procedures (Pritchett 1993, 108). On
the level of detail, Iannis Xenakis used probability theories to define some microscopic aspects of
Pithoprakta (1955–56), which is Greek for “actions by means of probability.” This work contains four
sections, characterized by textural and timbral attributes, such as glissandi and pizzicati. At the
macroscopic level, the sections are designed and controlled by the composer while the single
components of sound are controlled by mathematical theories (Joe and Song 2002, 268).

In the second type of indeterminate music, chance elements involve the performance. Notated events
are provided by the composer, but their arrangement is left to the determination of the performer.
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956) presents nineteen events which are composed and
notated in a traditional way, but the arrangement of these events is determined by the performer
spontaneously during the performance. In Earle Brown’s Available forms II (1962), the conductor is
asked to decide the order of the events at the very moment of the performance (Joe and Song 2002,
269).

The greatest degree of indeterminacy is reached by the third type of indeterminate music, where
traditional musical notation is replaced by visual or verbal signs suggesting how a work can be
performed, for example in graphic score pieces. Earle Brown’s December 1952 (1952) shows lines and
rectangles of various lengths and thicknesses that can read as loudness, duration, or pitch. The
performer chooses how to read them. Another example is Morton Feldman’s Intersection No. 2
(1951) for piano solo, written on coordinate paper. Time units are represented by the squares viewed
horizontally, while relative pitch levels of high, middle, and low are indicated by three vertical
squares in each row. The performer determines what particular pitches and rhythms to play (Joe and
Song 2002, 269).

Open form 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. 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 (1915) 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 "dynamic, closed" mobile musical composition is Stockhausen's Zyklus (1959) (Maconie 2005,
185).

Stochastic music
Stochastic processes may be used in music to compose a fixed piece or may be produced in
performance. Stochastic music was pioneered by Xenakis, who coined the term stochastic music.
Specific examples of mathematics, statistics, and physics applied to music composition are the use of
the statistical mechanics of gases in Pithoprakta, statistical distribution of points on a plane in
Diamorphoses, minimal constraints in Achorripsis, the normal distribution in ST/10 and Atrées,
Markov chains in Analogiques, game theory in Duel and Stratégie, group theory in Nomos Alpha (for
Siegfried Palm), set theory in Herma and Eonta (Chrissochoidis, Houliaras, and Mitsakis 2005), and
Brownian motion in N'Shima.

Xenakis frequently used computers to produce his scores, such as the ST series including Morsima-
Amorsima and Atrées, and founded CEMAMu (Xenakis 1971,).

Film music
Examples of extensive aleatoric writing can be found in small passages from John Williams' score for
the film Images. Other film composers using this technique are Mark Snow (X-Files: Fight the
Future), John Corigliano, and others (Karlin and Wright 2004, 430–36).

See also
Aleatoricism
Algorithmic music
Generative music

References
Boehmer, Konrad. 1967. Zur Theorie der offenen Form in der neuen Musik. Darmstadt: Edition
Tonos. (Second printing 1988.)
Boulez, Pierre. 1957. "Aléa". Nouvelle Revue française, no. 59 (1 November). Reprinted in Pierre
Boulez, Relevés d’apprenti, collected and presented by Paule Thévenin, 41–45. Paris: Éditions
du Seuil, 1966. ISBN 2-02-001930-2. English as "Alea" in Pierre Boulez, Notes of an
Apprenticeship, collected and presented by Paule Thévenin, translated from the French by
Herbert Weinstock, 35–51. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968. New English translation, as "Alea",
in Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, collected and presented by Paule
Thévenin, translated from the French by Stephen Walsh, with an introduction by Robert
Piencikowski, 26–38. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
ISBN 0-19-311210-8.
Chrissochoidis, Ilias, Stavros Houliaras, and Christos Mitsakis. 2005."Set theory in Xenakis'
EONTA" (https://www.academia.edu/249265/Set_theory_in_Xenakis_EONTA). In International
Symposium Iannis Xenakis, edited by Anastasia Georgaki and Makis Solomos, 241–49. Athens:
The National and Kapodistrian University.
Farach-Colton, Andrew (November 2005). "Hovhaness Concerto for 2 Pianos; (3) Pieces for 2
Pianos" (http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/hovhaness-concerto-for-2-pianos-3-pieces-for-2-pi
anos). Gramophone. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
Fisher, Lynn. 2010. "An Unlikely Musical Pioneer? Early Aleatory Counterpoint (http://aleacounter
point.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/orpheus/)". AleaCounterpoint blog site (Accessed 22 June
2010).
Griffiths, Paul. 2001. "Aleatory". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second
edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Hovhaness, Alan. 1944. Lousadzak, op. 48 (score). New York: Peer International Corporation.
Hovhaness, Alan. 1958. Meditation on Orpheus, op. 155 (score). New York: C. F. Peters
Corporation.
Jacobs, Arthur. 1966. "Admonitoric Note". The Musical Times 107, no. 1479 (May): 414.
Joe, Jeongwon, and S. Hoon Song. 2002. "Roland Barthes' ’Text’ and Aleatoric Music: Is the Birth
of the Reader the Birth of the Listener?". Muzikologija 2:263–81.
 Karlin, Fred, and Rayburn Wright. 2004. On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring,
second edition. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-94135-0 (cloth); ISBN 0-415-94136-9 (pbk).
Lieberman, David. 2006. "Game Enhanced Music Manuscript (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?i
d=1174472)." In GRAPHITE '06: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer
Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, Kuala Lumpur
(Malaysia), November 29–December 2, 2006, edited by Y. T. Lee, Siti Mariyam Shamsuddin,
Diego Gutierrez, and Norhaida Mohd Suaib, 245–50. New York: ACM Press. ISBN 1-59593-564-
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Lotringer, Sylvère. 1998. "Duchamp Werden". In Crossings: Kunst zum Hören und Sehen:
Kunsthalle Wien, 29.5.-13. 9.1998 [exhibition catalogue], edited by Cathrin Pichler, 55-61.
Ostfildern bei Stuttgart: Cantz. ISBN 3-89322-443-2.
Maconie, Robin. 2005. Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lanham, Maryland,
Toronto, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 0-8108-5356-6.
Meyer-Eppler, Werner. 1957. "Statistic and Psychologic Problems of Sound", translated by
Alexander Goehr. Die Reihe 1 ("Electronic Music"): 55–61. Original German edition, 1955, as
"Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme", Die Reihe 1 ("Elektronische Musik"): 22–28.
Pimmer, Hans. 1997. Würfelkomposition: zeitgenössische Recherche: mit Betrachtungen über die
Musik 1799. Munich: Akademischer Verlag. ISBN 3-929115-90-5.
Prendergast, Mark J. 2000. The Ambient Century: from Mahler to Trance: The Evolution of Sound
in the Electronic Age. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-4213-9.
Pritchett, James. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Music in the 20th Century. Cambridge, New
York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41621-3 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-56544-8
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Rae, Charles Bodman. 2001. "Lutosławski, Witold (Roman)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music
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Randel, Don Michael. 2002. The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians. ISBN 0-
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Roig-Francolí, Miguel A. 2008. Understanding Post-Tonal Music. Boston: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-
07-293624-X.
Rosner, Arnold, and Vance Wolverton. 2001. "Hovhaness [Hovaness], Alan [Chakmakjian, Alan
Hovhaness]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by
Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Stone, Susan. 2005. "The Barrons: Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music (https://www.npr.org/te
mplates/story/story.php?storyId=4486840)", NPR Music (7 February). (Accessed 23 September
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Wölfflin, Heinrich. 1915. Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: das Problem der Stilentwicklung in
der neueren Kunst. Munich, F. Bruckmann.
Wölfflin, Heinrich. 1932. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in
Later Art, translated from the seventh German edition (1929) by Marie D. Hottinger. London: G.
Bell and Sons, Ltd. Reprinted, New York: Dover Publications, 1950.
Xenakis, Iannis. 1971. Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition. Bloomington
and London: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253323781.

External links
Mozart's Musikalisches Würfelspiel (https://web.archive.org/web/20181119113708/http://sunsite.u
nivie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/) - online version of Mozart's dice game
John Cage's Indeterminacy (http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy)
Video of an Aleatoric Musical Instrument (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ_KijiwQHE)

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