Aleatoricism (or aleatorism) is a term for musical compositions and other forms of art resulting from "actions made by chance". The term was first used "in the context of electro-acoustics and information theory" to describe "a course of sound events that is determined in its framework and flexible in detail", by Belgian-German physicist, acoustician, and information theorist Werner Meyer-Eppler. Werner Meyer-Eppler (1955) "Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme," Elektronische Musik, '' Die Reihe'' I ( Herbert Eimert, ed.) Vienna, p. 22. English translation: Werner Meyer-Eppler (1957) "Statistic and Psychologic Problems of Sound" (Alexander Goehr, transl.). Electronic Music, ''Die Reihe'' 1 (H. Eimert, ed.), pp. 55–61, esp. p. 55. In practical application, in compositions by

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

and Kirnberger, for instance, the order of the measures of a musical piece were left to be determined by throwing dice, and in performances of music by Pousseur (e.g., ''Répons pour sept musiciens'', 1960), musicians threw dice "for sheets of music and cues". However, more generally in musical contexts, the term has had varying meanings as it was applied by various composers, and so a single, clear definition for aleatory music is defied. The term was popularised by the musical composer

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music. Born in Montb ...

, but also

Witold Lutosławski Witold Roman Lutosławski (; 25 January 1913 – 7 February 1994) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among the major composers of 20th-century classical music, he is "generally regarded as the most significant Polish composer since Szymanow ...

and Franco Evangelisti. Its

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

derives from ''alea'', Latin for "

dice A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, ro ...

", and it is the noun associated with the adjectival ''aleatory'' and ''aleatoric''. Aleatory should not be confused with either indeterminacy, or

improvisation Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvis ...

In different fields

Architecture

Sean Keller and Heinrich Jaeger coined the term ''aleatory architecture'' to describe "a new approach that explicitly includes stochastic (re-) configuration of individual structural elements — that is to say 'chance.'"

Art

Literature

Charles Hartman discusses several methods of automatic generation of poetry in his book ''The Virtual Muse''.

Music

The term aleatory was first coined by Werner Meyer-Eppler in 1955 to describe a course of sound events that is "determined in general but depends on chance in detail". When his article was published in English, the translator mistakenly rendered his German noun ''Aleatorik'' as an adjective, and so inadvertently created a new English word, "aleatoric".

applied the term "aleatory" in this sense to his own pieces to distinguish them from the indeterminate music of

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

. While Boulez purposefully composed his pieces to allow the performer certain liberties with regard to the sequencing and repetition of parts, Cage often composed through the application of chance operations without allowing the performer liberties. Another composer of aleatory music was the German composer

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

, who had attended Meyer-Eppler's seminars in phonetics, acoustics, and information theory at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

from 1954 to 1956, and put these ideas into practice for the first time in his electronic composition '' Gesang der Jünglinge'' (1955–56), in the form of statistically structured, massed "complexes" of sounds. Aleatoric techniques are sometimes used in contemporary film music, e.g., in

John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (November 15, 2022)Classic Connection review, ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who w ...

's film scores and

Mark Snow Mark Snow (born Martin Fulterman; August 26, 1946) is an American composer for film and television. Among his most famous compositions is the theme music for science fiction television series '' The X-Files''. ''The X Files'' instrumental wa ...

's music for ''X-Files: Fight the Future''.Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, ''On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring'', second edition (New York: Routledge, 2004): 430–436. or .

References

External links

* , 1979 film by Andy Voda
Alison Knowles website
i.a. about her 1968 computer poem "House of Dust"

a film by Fred Camper * {{IMDb title, qid=Q123511859, title=Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order, (1971)
''Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order (1971)''
BFI Film & TV Database. Applications of randomness Artistic techniques