Chance and Aleatoricism

Seminar List • Abstract • Preparation • Main Text

Introduction

• Possibilities and probabilities - our understanding of statistics
• Why the chicken crossed the road - Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker
• The National Lottery
• The Dice Man, by Luke Rhinehart

Music

• Levels of Interpretation - chant, renaissance, Bach...
• Notation - The Mannhein Crescendo, Sturm und Drang
• Historical increase in control by composer in order to express more complex ideas.
• The twentieth century: serialism, integral serialism, chaos and stochasticism
• John Cage and the I-Ching
• Messiaen
• Xenakis
• Harrison Birtwistle
• What has music to do with statistics?
• The Extent of Chance
• Chance and Interpretation
• Choice and Chance
• Chance and Technology
• Fractals
• Entropy

Mozart's 'Musikalisches Würfelspiel' (Dice Game)

Look at the following implementation of Mozart's method for generating compositions using dice:

• by Jonathan S. Simon - this requires JSyn to work correctly
• J Chuang
• Marco Barnig
• Andrew Troedson

Consider.

Prepare.

Main text (not usually available until after the lecture).