aleatory music
- noun
- /ˌeɪliˈɔːtəri ˈmjuːzɪk/
- Specialized
:
música aleatoria
- A well-known example of aleatory music is John Cage's piece 4'33", where performers remain silent and let environmental sounds take over.
Examples
-
4' 33" is aleatory music inasmuch as chance determines what real-world sounds will fill the silence.
Academic text (2000) -
Cage has written other kinds of aleatory music, but he and everyone else regard 4'33" as his most important and most visionary work.
Academic text (2000) -
Many contemporary composers experiment with aleatory music, allowing musicians to improvise their parts during a live performance.
-
In aleatory music, the outcome of the performance can vary greatly each time, depending on the choices of the performers.
Synonyms
Music where chance or the performer decides which sounds happen
Music in which some sounds happen by accident or by a player's choice
How Indeterminate
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'aleatory' means characterized by randomness and 'music' denotes organized sound, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to music involving chance or performer discretion. Although 'aleatory' is a low-frequency academic adjective, the meaning follows straightforward semantic combination and is therefore transparent to someone familiar with the constituents.
Etymology
Aleatory music comes from the old Latin word alea, which means 'dice', and you can imagine a composer rolling 'dice' or leaving parts of a piece for the player to choose. That's why aleatory music means music where some parts are left to 'chance' or to the player's choice.