Musical dice game

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A musical dice game is a system to create musical compositions with the help of a random generator , in this case using dice .

history

The musical dice games appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th century and were considered a popular pastime. Probably the oldest method of composing with the help of dice comes from the composer and music theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger . The most famous such dice game is attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . His “Instructions for composing waltzes using two dice ...” ( KV 294d / 516f) was not published until 1793, after his death. However, it is not included in Mozart's “Directory of all my works”.

Musical dice games were mainly published for piano until the first half of the 19th century . The most important prerequisite for the player (s) was the ability to read notes and sufficient command of the musical instrument. With the increasing spread of the mechanical jukeboxes , the interest in the games decreased. It was only in the second half of the 20th century that these compositional systems were remembered in order to be able to generate automatically generated pieces of music with the electronic computing technology that was now emerging .

Procedure

In the majority of musical dice games, the aim is to create a uniform and periodic piece of music. They are therefore mostly waltzes , polonaises or minuets with a very schematic harmonic structure. Based on a basic composition, several variations of a theme were composed. A random number is used to determine which measure from which variation is to be played.

A random number is generated mostly by rolling the dice, but sometimes also using playing cards or another suitable method . This serves as a row index for a table in which the numbers of the individual measures are contained. The number of lines corresponds to the number of composed variations. The columns are to be selected according to the order of the throws: 1st throw - 1st column, 2nd throw - 2nd column etc. The bars numbered consecutively on an associated sheet of music are played in the order specified by random numbers and the table. Often it was necessary to transfer the notation to a new sheet of paper.

Well-known musical dice games (selection)

  • Johann Philipp Kirnberger : The always ready polonoise and minuet composer . Christian Friedrich Winter, Berlin 1757
  • Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach : The idea of ​​doing a double contrapunct in the octave of six bars without knowing the rules of it . Lange, Berlin 1754–1778
  • Maximilian Stadler : Table from which you can throw countless minuets and trio for the piano . Composed in 1759/1763 and published by Artaria, Vienna in 1781; Republished in 1790 under Joseph Haydn's name as: Gioco filarmonico o sia maniera facile per comporre un infinito numero de minuetti e trio anche senza sapere il contrapunto by Luigi Marescalchi in Naples.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Instructions to compose as many waltzes or grinders with two dice as much as you want without understanding anything of the composition without being musical (KV Anh. 294d) . Johann Julius Hummel, Berlin-Amsterdam 1793
  • Michael Johann Friedrich Wiedeburg : Musical charting = game ex g major, where you always win a musical piece, for the pleasure and practice of the piano player and for the use of the organists in small towns and in the country . AF Winter, Aurich 1788
  • Friedrich Gottlob Hayn : Instructions to compose Angloisen with cubes . Kirmse, Dresden 1798
  • Antonio Calegari: Gioco pitagorico . Sebastian Valle, Venice 1801
  • Gustav Gerlach : Art of composing Scottish dances without being musical . Lischke, Berlin around 1830

literature

  • Horst Völz : Computer and Art . In: accent . tape 87 . Urania Verlag , Leipzig; Jena; Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-332-00220-1 , p. 88-93 .
  • Gerhard Hauptenthal: History of Cube Music in Examples . 2 volumes. Self-published, Saarbrücken 1994, (Saarbrücken, Univ., Diss., 1994).

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