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The term became known to European composers through lectures by Acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at Darmstadt International Summer Courses For New Music in the beginning of the 1950s . According to his definition, "aleatoric processes are such processes which have been fixed in their outline but the details of which are left to chance"Meyer-Eppler, Werner: "Statistische und psychologische Klangprobleme", Die Reihe 1, 1955, p.22.. EARLY PRECEDENTS An early genre of composition that could be considered a precedent for aleatoric compositions were the '' Musikalische Würfelspiele '' or Musical Dice Games, popular in the late 18th and early 19th century. (One such dice game is attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart .) These games consisted of a sequence of musical Measures , for which each measure had several possible versions, and a procedure for selecting the precise sequence based on the throwing of a number of dice. Somewhat related to chance music is composer Alan Hovhaness 's use of what he called the "spirit murmur" (beginning with his 1944 piano Concerto ''Lousadzak''), in which instruments repeat a melodic or rhythmic phrase for a certain amount of time in an uncoordinated fashion. Similar textures had been employed by Charles Ives , as early as '' The Unanswered Question '' (1908). American composer John Cage 's ''Music of Changes'' (1951) is the first piece to be conceived largely through random procedures (Randel 2002, 17). MODERN USAGE The French composer Pierre Boulez was largely responsible for popularizing the term, using it to describe works that give the performer certain liberties with regard to the sequencing and repetition of parts, an approach pioneered by avant-garde American composer-theorist Henry Cowell in his ''Mosaic Quartet'' (String Quartet No. 3, 1935). The term was intended by Boulez to distinguish his work from pieces composed through the application of chance operations by John Cage and Cage's aesthetic of indeterminate music or indeterminacy. Early examples of aleatoric music include '' Klavierstück XI '' (1956) by Karlheinz Stockhausen , which features 19 elements to be performed in changing sequences; certain orchestral works of Witold Lutosławski from after 1959 which contain music where the orchestral ensemble is not precisely dictated; and in some works by Krzysztof Penderecki characteristic sequences are repeated quickly, producing a kind of oscillating sound. There has been considerable confusion of the terms aleatory and indeterminate / chance music. One of Cage's pieces, ''HPSCHD'', itself composed using chance procedures, uses music from Mozart's ''Musikalisches Würfelspiel'', referred to above, as well as original music. He also generally used Coin-tossing and other procedures depending on designs involving a pre-defined number of choices to be made. Still, both the Aesthetic aims as well as the number of elements controlled by chance make the two methods clearly different. Douglas Hofstadter , writing in '' Gödel, Escher, Bach ,'' thus punningly characterises some of the musical compositions of John Cage by using the acronym CAGE to stand for Composition of '''A'''leatorically '''G'''enerated '''E'''lements, in contrast to a '''B'''eautiful '''A'''periodic Crystal of '''H'''armony (or BACH ). "OPEN FORM" CHANCE MUSIC Open form is a term sometimes used for '''mobile''' or '''polyvalent''' Musical Form s, where the order of Movements or Section s is indeterminate or left up to the Performer . Roman Haubenstock-Ramati composed a series of influential "mobiles" such as ''Interpolation'' (1958). However, "open form" in music is also used in the sense defined by the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (''Renaissance und Barock'', 1888) to mean a work which is fundamentally incomplete, represents an unfinished activity, or points outside of itself. In this sense, a "mobile form" can be either "open" or "closed". An example of a closed mobile musical composition is Stockhausen's Momente (1962-64/69). Terry Riley 's '' In C '' (1964) was composed of 53 short sequences; each member of the ensemble can repeat a given sequence as many times as he or she chooses before going on to the next (similar to Hovhaness's "spirit murmer", only with a fixed pulsing rhythm), making the details of each performance of ''In C'' unique though, because the overall course is fixed, it is a closed form. SEE ALSO
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