Aleatoricism
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Aleatoricism (or aleatorism) is a term for musical compositions and other forms of art[citation needed] 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.[1][2] In practical application, in compositions by Mozart 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".[1] 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.[1] The term was popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez,[not verified in body] but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti.
Its etymology derives from alea, Latin for "dice",[3] and it is the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric.
Aleatory should not be confused with either indeterminacy,[3] or improvisation.[1][failed verification]
In different fields
[edit | edit source]Architecture
[edit | edit source]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.'"[4]
Art
[edit | edit source]This section needs expansion with: a prose description of specific, sourced examples of aleatory that have been described by published authors. You can help by adding to it. (November 2019) |
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Literature
[edit | edit source]Charles Hartman discusses several methods of automatic generation of poetry in his book The Virtual Muse.[5]
Music
[edit | edit source]The term aleatory was 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".[2] 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".[6] Pierre Boulez applied the term "aleatory" in this sense to his own pieces to distinguish them from the indeterminate music of John Cage.[1] 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,[1] who had attended Meyer-Eppler's seminars in phonetics, acoustics, and information theory at the University of Bonn from 1954 to 1956,[7] 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.[8]
Aleatoric techniques are sometimes used in contemporary film music, e.g., in John Williams's film scores[clarification needed] and Mark Snow's music for X-Files: Fight the Future.[9]
See also
[edit | edit source]- 20th-century classical music
- 21st-century classical music
- Aesthetics
- Aleatory variable
- Avant-garde
- Biomusic
- Biomusicology
- Constrained writing
- Contemporary classical music
- Generative art
- New-age music
- Philosophy of film
- Philosophy and literature
- Philosophy of music
- Stochastic
- Zoomusicology
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ a b c d e f Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Arthur Jacobs, "Admonitoric Note",The Musical Times '107, no. 1479 (May 1966): 414.
- ^ Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: A Biography, translated by Richard Toop (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992): 68–72. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). (cloth) Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). (pbk).
- ^ Pascal Decroupet and Elena Ungeheuer, "Through the Sensory Looking-Glass: The Aesthetic and Serial Foundations of Gesang der Jünglinge", translated by Jerome Kohl, Perspectives of New Music 36, No. 1 (Winter 1998): 97–142. Citation on 99–100.
- ^ Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, second edition (New York: Routledge, 2004): 430–436. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). or Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..[verification needed]
Further reading
[edit | edit source]- Gignoux, Anne Claire. 2003. La récriture: formes, enjeux, valeurs autour du nouveau roman. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
- Rennie, Nicholas. 2005. Speculating on the Moment: The Poetics of Time and Recurrence in Goethe, Leopardi, and Nietzsche. Münchener Universitätsschriften: Münchener komparatistische Studien 8. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
External links
[edit | edit source]
- Chance Chants (17:42) on YouTube, 1979 film by Andy Voda
- Alison Knowles website, i.a. about her 1968 computer poem "House of Dust"
- About SN (1984), a film by Fred Camper
- Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order at IMDbLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 31: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order (1971), BFI Film & TV Database.