After a span of some six months a kind of penny has at last dropped. We begin to see whither the Member was driving! This has come about in part through our perusal of the entry "aleatory music" in the Oxford Dictionary of Music edited by Michael Kennedy, one time music critic of the Sunday Telegraph. Let us quote the article in full:

"aleatoric music (from Lat. alea, dice; hence the throw of the dice for chance). Synonym for indeterminacy," [sic] "i.e. music that cannot be predicted before performance or music which was composed through chance procedures (statistical or computerized). The adjective 'aleatoric' is a bastard word, to be avoided by those who care for language."

Well! that claim of bastardry is what our Member was attempting to warn us about through his so diplomatic hints was it not?

Yet the word "aleatoric" is found in the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as in the Collins and the Chambers dictionaries, without indication of illegitimacy. The O.E.D. hints at a distinction, even: "aleatory - dependent on the throw of a die; hence, dependent on uncertain contingencies" and "aleatoric - dependent on uncertain contingencies; done at random." We would most likely have looked it up at the time of writing.

In the case of the Oxford Dictionary of Music then Mr. Kennedy's contributor seems to have had some sort of bête noire in his bonnet may we not conclude? Can our Member point us to where it all comes from?

What the Oxford Dictionary of Music would have done better to have said is that "indeterminate music" "aleatoric music" or "aleatory music", whatever one wishes to call it, is illegitimate music and the opposite of Art - that is our considered conclusion. Some of the more argumentative Members may wish to dispute this point but what pleasure we shall take in proving them wrong!

Baz

You should listen to Olli Mustonen play something some time.

Then again, you shouldn't really.

And what about the Yi-Ching? It must be make-believe must not it?

...But we don't have to wait until the 20th c for "chance" music determined by the throw of a die! There is that wonderful Mass by Josquin Desprez (authorship doubted by some musicological cranks - but never mind!) called Missa Di Dadi.

The clefs shown are merely faces of a die, and the idea is that when the die is thrown, the number revealed indicates the Mode to be used for that particular performance.

Since, however, the composer has had the decency to compose a piece of music that actually works perfectly well in any of the four tonalities (i.e. protus, deuterus, tritus or tetrardus - each of which divides into an "authentic" and a "plagal" mode) without further need for "mucking around" by the performers, the only "chance" element is the throw of the die. This is, therefore, an early example of "controlled aleatoricism" (is it not?).

Good old Josquin!

Baz

Your point being?

'Died by his own hand' we find a more sympathetic formulation. Interested Members may find this an informative introduction. As for the man's own writings, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is shorter than most but not untypical, and is easily obtained in paperback. It would fit comfortably in most Christmas stockings. We have not watched the recent(ish) film, nor do we think we want to. Has any Member read the posthumously published See the Old Lady Decently? We have not - one for 2008, perhaps. We find the title most affecting, and not at all silly (indeed, it is almost embarrassingly plain, a curious effect for a supposedly 'experimental' writer, but again, not at all untypical of the committed socialist Johnson).

You're quite right, Andy. They're loose sheaves - 25 of them, each a bundle of some 10 or so pages.

Is it? Who kills himself at seventy?

That's incredible! Your knowledge of the literary avant-garde of the 1960s clearly lags behind that of the musical one.

I don't actually recall whether the pages within each sheaf are numbered sequentially beginning with page 1, but I suppose they must be: I can't think of another way of doing it that wouldn't prejudicially imply an order for the sheaves.

The singular of 'sheaves' is 'sheaf', incidentally. Is not it?