View source for Aleatoricism

{{Short description|Art works resulting from actions by chance}}
{{For|the legal term|Aleatory contract}}
{{More citations needed|date=December 2010}}
'''Aleatoricism''' (or '''aleatorism''') is a term for musical compositions and other forms of art{{citation needed|date=November 2019}} resulting from "actions made by [[randomness|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]].<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/><ref name=MeyerEppler>[[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.</ref> In practical application, in compositions by [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] and [[Johann Kirnberger|Kirnberger]], for instance, the order of the [[Bar (music)|measures]] of a musical piece were left to be determined by throwing dice, and in performances of music by [[Henri Pousseur|Pousseur]] (e.g., ''Répons pour sept musiciens'', 1960), musicians threw dice "for sheets of music and cues".<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/> 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.<ref name="newmusicbox1950">{{cite journal | author = Sabine Feisst | date = 1 March 2002 | title = Losing Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950 | journal = [[NewMusicBox]] | url = http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=35tp02 | access-date = 24 March 2019 | quote = The concept of 'aleatory' was preferred by European composers, among them Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti. It was first used by Werner Meyer-Eppler in the context of electro-acoustics and information theory for describing a course of sound events that is determined in its framework and flexible in detail.(6) Aleatory, a word derived from the Latin ''alea'', has many different meanings such as dice, game of dice, risk, danger, bad surprise, and chance. Most composers using aleatory referred to the meaning of chance, but some composers referred to meanings like risk (for instance Evangelisti) and dice (Henri Pousseur composed a piece called Répons pour sept musiciens, 1960, where performers throw dice for sheets of music and cues, a procedure similar to pieces by Kirnberger or Mozart in which the order of the measures is determined by throwing a dice.). Many composers thought they dealt with chance and created chance compositions when they allowed for greater performance flexibility. None of them used chance operations as Cage did. Since many composers were skeptical about "pure" chance and mere accident they came up with the idea of "controlled chance" and "limited aleatorism" (preferred by Lutosławski). | archive-date = 4 June 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110604040617/http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=35tp02 | url-status = dead }}</ref> The term was popularised by the musical composer [[Pierre Boulez]],{{Citation needed lead|date=May 2020|reason=The body of the article says the term used by Boulez is "aleatory", not "aleatoricism"}} but also [[Witold Lutosławski]] and [[Franco Evangelisti (composer)|Franco Evangelisti]].

Its [[etymology]] derives from ''alea'', Latin for "[[dice]]",<ref name=LindstedtMiMglossary>{{cite web | editor = Iwona Lindstedt  | date = 24 November 2019 | title = Glossary: Aleatory music | work = MusicinMovement.eu | url = https://www.musicinmovement.eu/glossary | access-date = 24 November 2019 | quote = The term aleatory was popularized in Europe by Pierre Boulez means a musical result of actions made by chance ("alea" is Latin for "dice") or choice. The composers offered the players, for example, choices of route through the fragments of their work, allowed them to join these elements freely but, at the same time, they were completely responsible for the overall shape of the work. Aleatory music is sometimes treated as a synonym of indeterminate music (indeterminacy) but the latter term was preferred by John Cage and meant not only performance liberties but also the use of chance element in the process of composition. Although aleatoricism is an extremely different musical concept than serialism, the end result of both ideas may sound surprisingly alike. | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190730150527/http://musicinmovement.eu/glossary | archive-date = 30 July 2019 | url-status = dead }}</ref> and it is the noun associated with the adjectival ''aleatory'' and ''aleatoric''.

Aleatory should not be confused with either [[indeterminacy (music)|indeterminacy]],<ref name=LindstedtMiMglossary/><!--REMOVED: "<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/>" REASON: The term "indeterminacy" appears only in the title at this webpage, and so does not support the use of this citation in support of this sentence.--> or [[improvisation]].<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/>{{Failed verification|date=November 2019|reason=On the contrary, Feisst treats aleatory and improvisation together, as closely related terms.}}

== 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.'"<ref>{{Cite arXiv|last=Keller|first=Sean|last2=Jaeger|first2=Heinrich|date=2015-10-19|title=Aleatory Architectures|class=cond-mat.soft|eprint=1510.05721}}</ref>

===Art===
{{expand section | with = a prose description of specific, sourced examples of aleatory that have been described by published authors | small = no|date=November 2019}}
{{see also|Surrealist automatism#Automatic drawing and painting|Pareidolia|Apophenia}}

===Literature===
Charles Hartman discusses several methods of automatic generation of poetry in his book ''The Virtual Muse''.<ref name="Hartman">
{{Citation | author = Charles Hartman | title = The Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry | place = Hanover, New Hampshire | publisher = Wesleyan University Press | year = 1996 | isbn = 0819522392 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/virtualmuseexper00hart/page/54 54–64] | url = https://archive.org/details/virtualmuseexper00hart/page/54 }}</ref>

===Music===
{{main|Aleatoric music}}
The term [[aleatoric music|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".<ref name=MeyerEppler/> 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".<ref>Arthur Jacobs, "Admonitoric Note",''[[The Musical Times]]'' '107, no. 1479 (May 1966): 414.</ref> [[Pierre Boulez]] applied the term "aleatory" in this sense to his own pieces to distinguish them from the [[indeterminate music]] of [[John Cage]].<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/> 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]],<ref name="newmusicbox1950"/> who had attended Meyer-Eppler's seminars in phonetics, acoustics, and information theory at the [[University of Bonn]] from 1954 to 1956,<ref>Michael Kurtz, ''Stockhausen: A Biography'', translated by [[Richard Toop]] (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992): 68–72. {{ISBN|0-571-14323-7}} (cloth) {{ISBN|0-571-17146-X}} (pbk).</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref>

Aleatoric techniques are sometimes used in contemporary film music, e.g., in [[John Williams]]'s film scores{{clarify|date=November 2019}} and [[Mark Snow]]'s music for ''X-Files: Fight the Future''.<ref>Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright, ''On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring'', second edition (New York: Routledge, 2004): 430–436. {{ISBN|0415941350}} or {{ISBN|0-415-94136-9}}.{{verification needed|date=November 2019|reason=It is unlikely that the page number of the cited content would not change between hardcover and paperback; the scholarly solution is to list just the ISBN of the work that was consulted; we are guiding readers to what was used, and not locating the work so it might sell.}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[20th-century classical music]]
*[[21st-century classical music]]
*[[Aesthetics]]
*[[Random variable|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==
{{Reflist|colwidth=45em}}

==Further reading==
* Gignoux, Anne Claire. 2003. ''La récriture: formes, enjeux, valeurs autour du nouveau roman''. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne. {{ISBN|2-84050-260-7}}.
* 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. {{ISBN|9783892449683}}.

==External links==
{{wiktionary|aleatory}}
* {{YouTube|QchceC3rV2k|''Chance Chants'' (17:42)}}, 1979 film by Andy Voda
* [http://www.aknowles.com Alison Knowles website], i.a. about her 1968 computer poem "House of Dust"
* [http://www.fredcamper.com/F/SN.html About ''SN'' (1984)], a film by Fred Camper
* {{IMDb title|qid=Q123511859|title=Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order|(1971)}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20071115103851/http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/50946 ''Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order (1971)''], BFI Film & TV Database.

[[Category:Applications of randomness]]
[[Category:Artistic techniques]]