Chance Music

Chance music (or aleatoric music) plays with the idea or being spontaneous and leaving the music up to chance (from as simple as rolling the dice to determine the next chord). This opens up the composition of music and allow the artist some freedom from their usual work.
In some ways, it is similar to improvisation in the fact that there has to be some musical knowledge to be able to competently perform.

"If one traces the history of Western art music and the development of its notional system, it is revealed that composers have tried to control more and more aspects of their compositions as precisely as possible" (Joe & Song, 2002, p. 264). Chance music when written down is something that would seem alien to someone who has been classically trained, as there is no right or wrong when it comes to interpretation of it.

This piece of chance music here includes many instruments as in a conventional orchestra ranging from wind instruments such as clarinet and oboe to piano and harp to stringed violins and the percussive timpani. The notation for each instrument is conventional however. The only recognisable feature is the treble clef and stave with the notes that follow placed in seemingly a random way. Furthermore, the whole piece is split into five sections, with one spanning most of the page while four only a quarter of that.

This way of notation not seen in the Western world of music allows for interpretation and means that no two performances of the same piece will be the same. There's something exciting about that fact as art encourages freedom of expression.


One piece of chance music that has been performed is titled "Stripsody" by Cathy Berberian, an American mezzo-soprano. Showing wide vocal range and accomplishing a characterisation that had not really been heard of by a women before was overshadowed in the "male dominated world of contemporary composition, [having] a decisive impact on the critical reception of her compositional debut with Stripsody in 1966" (Meehan, 2011, p. 8). By only using words and comical annotations, Berberian interprets the piece and makes it her own right from the beginning with a yell that would rival Tarzans'. Barbarians' contribution to the contemporary scene help to shape and educate people about aleatoric music in the western hemisphere and the fact that that music doesn't have to perfect and sound the same every time. Stripsody represents "a radically new paradigm and a totally different musical conception" (Garbuglia, 2011, pp. 44-58)

Working on chance music for me was a unique concept as I had not really done anything like that before however I was willing to give it a shot. Although it is not my usual style of composing, I found it interesting in the fact that I can see it helping me when I have writers block when writing a song and can't figure out the next chord to use.
Adding on to the concept of rolling the dice to determine the music, using an 11 digit phone number and a twelve sided dice (to represent a chromatic scale, where there are twelve pitches, each a semitone above of below another - as opposed to a harmonic). Assigning each note to a number: 1 = C, 2 = C#, 3 = D, (and so on) and using the number's of the phone to determine how long each note would last: 0 = rest, 1 = 1 beat etc, an unusual melody was created with the right hand. To make the piece sound more like a composition, I improvised when it came to the left hand and played a variety of chords. In a way, it can be a starting point for a composition however for me, as much as I like the chance aspect of it, it isn't really what I enjoy.