Music Banter - Aleatoric Music

Quote:

Originally Posted by toybassoon (Post 1114579)

I'm trying to research symphonic aleatoric music. Know any winners?

I'm glad you posted about aleatoric music, because I never knew the name for it although I've played at least one orchestral piece that had aleatoric sections.

I didn't realize a whole body of aleatoric music exists in which "some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performers" (Aleatoric music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

I'm listening now to pieces by Charles Ives, a composer whose works were beloved by Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, and I am trying to hear the aleatory in his music. Ives' creativity is enchanting, his use of a wide range of unusual compositional elements, inspiring, and his life story as a determined individual and loner (in the musical world), admirable:

Quote:

About Charles Ives
Grateful Dead Guide: The Ives Touch

One scholar writes that as his works were uncovered, “Ives started looking like the authentic hare of modern music, at the finish line before Stravinsky, before Schoenberg, before anyone.”

Stravinsky himself called Ives ‘the Great Anticipator,’ and in one interesting comment on the Fourth Symphony in 1966, said of Ives: “This fascinating composer was exploring the 1960s during the heyday of Strauss and Debussy. Polytonality; atonality; tone clusters; perspectivistic effects; chance; statistical composition; permutation; add-a-part, practical-joke, and improvisatory music: these were Ives’ discoveries a half-century ago as he quietly set about devouring the contemporary cake before the rest of us even found a seat at the same table.”

Another scholar calls Ives “a major composer who remained an amateur…writing music primarily for his own amusement and gratification, cultivating a style that seemed – at least for most listeners – utterly dissociated from the musical mainstream of his day. Ives was a quintessential outsider, an American maverick who followed his own idiosyncratic path in pursuit of private artistic goals, with little apparent regard for the demands of the world…”

Charles Ives - "The Unanswered Question"
As best I can tell from reading about this piece, an element of chance is introduced by allowing the conductor to cue different orchestra sections at different times, but I'm not sure! I like the solemn, hymn-like sound of this piece spiced by dissonances and unexpected instrument entrances:

***

Charles Ives - Symphony n.4 - II. Comedy: Allegretto (second part)
This is the Ives piece that especially inspired and appealed to Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, according to the source quoted above: