Aleatoric music
Music Sound
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music (or aleatory) 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 became known to
European composers through lectures by acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler
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 details of which are left to
chance". Chance music is preferred by some composers.
The term—deriving from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice"—has come to
be associated most often with procedures in which the chance element involves a
relatively limited number of possibilities. 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. 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. Cage's Music of Changes (1951)
is the first piece to be conceived largely through random procedures (Randel
2002, p.17).
Among examples of aleatory music, Klavierstück XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen
features a number of elements to be performed in changing sequences, certain
orchestral works of Witold Lutosławski contain music where the orchestral
ensemble is not precisely dictated, and in some works by Krzysztof Penderecki characteristic sequences are repeated quickly,
producing a kind of oscillating sound.
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.
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. 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, 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).
Some aleatoric music, such as that of the Mangabros, is inspired by the book
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.
One of the most striking modern examples of aleatoric music occurs during
Eric Whitacre's piece Cloudburst. The song uses aleatoric music to evoke a storm; singers
repeat certain words at random through several sections.
Most modern software and hardware music composition tools, synthesizers, and
signal processors ("effects") provide "randomization" features to foster
aleatoric composition within specified parameters. In some synthesizers, signal
processors, and sequencers, randomization can be applied to almost any parameter
of sound synthesis, signal processing, or scoring. This technique is employed
frequently in modern electronic music.
Open form and mobile form
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).
See also
Source
- Randel, Don Michael (2002). The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music
and Musicians.
ISBN 0674009789.
External links
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Music Sound, v. 2.0, by MultiMedia
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