What is Chance Music?
Updated: Jun 1, 2019
#Chance #Music or #Aleatoric Music is music where some element of the music is left to chance. This might be using cards, dice, computer generator, mathematical formulas, the I-Ching, or other methods to make musical decisions. In fact, the word "aleatory" comes from the Latin word alea meaning "dice." Musical dice games have been known for centuries, including a famous example attributed to no other but Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. According to the instructions, this Musical Dice Game or Musikalisches Würfelspiel allows anyone "To compose without the least knowledge of Music so much German Waltzer of Schleifer as one pleases, by throwing a certain Number with two Dice".
To compose without the least knowledge of Music so much German Waltzer of Schleifer as one pleases, by throwing a certain Number with two Dice".
In the 20th century, chance music went from a novelty to serious business. American composers Charles Ives in the early 1900s and Henry Cowell in the 1930s emptied chance techniques. Composer, John Cage, was a pioneer of what he referred to as "Indeterminacy." Indeterminacy is a composing technique where some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the performer's choice. Cage wrote that it's "the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways." There are three different types of chance music. The first is the use of random procedures to produce a determinate, fixed score. The second is mobile form. The last is indeterminate notation, including graphic notation and texts (like playing music based on a drawing, rather than a traditional music score. See the Steiner example below using Pure Data, a computer language for computer music and multimedia works.)
