Looking Outwards 06: Randomness

For this blog post, I chose to examine Mozart’s Musikalisches Würfelspiel which was a waltz created by chance. What I found so interesting about this waltz was how it showed that it’s hard to create something from pure chance but that it took some knowledge and methodology on the composers part. Essentially, without the knowledge behind what parts go into a waltz, Mozart’s piece would not have been so successful. The roll of a die was not meant to determine a random note – instead they corresponded to pre-composed portions of a waltz that were then pieced together by the chance of a dice.

Normally, I would not look into music since I have very limited music knowledge. However, I came across an article that “coded” Mozart’s waltz through computer generated chance and I found it really interesting how I was able to see/visualize the waltz through code.