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Aleatory (derived from the Latin word aleae, ‘dice’) is an adjective applied to any art form in which chance is allowed to play a part—although this can include ‘finished’ art: for example, in the 1920s the Dada artist Hans Arp made paper collages which depended on the random alighting of pieces of paper he dropped on to the base-paper from above, while the 1930s German sculptor Kurt Schwitters made ‘rubbish houses’ from whatever objects he came across.
The main application of aleatory techniques is in the performing arts, and particularly in music. In art music, 20th-century composers as significant as Pierre Boulez, Györgi Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski and Karlheinz Stockhausen use aleatory techniques as an integral, and entirely accepted, component of their work. In aleatory music the players are encouraged to choose the sequence of movements, sections or individual chords and notes, or to improvise on a pattern or idea suggested by the composer—for example, in Ligeti\'s Aventures, on letters of the alphabet, and in Lutoslawski\'s Preludes and Fugue, on a series of lines, squares and triangles. Thus, the result differs from player to player and from performer to performer. Aleatory music is, in conception, similar to both Far Eastern art music and to jazz and rock, all of which involve improvisation, on an agreed basis, as a feature of the performance.
Aleatory procedures have been used in the theatre, and in the recitation of poetry; but there are few signs here that they have progressed beyond the experimental stage. KMcL |
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