Musikalisches Würfelspiel
A
Musikalisches Würfelspiel (
Musical dice game) was a system for using
dice to randomly 'generate' music (long before computer systems). These games were quite popular throughout Western Europe in the 18th century. Several different games were devised, some that did not require dice, but merely 'choosing a random number.' Other famous examples are
Philip Kirnbirger's
The Ever Ready Composer of Polonaises and Minuets (1757 1st edition; revised 2nd 1783) and
Joseph Haydn's
Philharmonic Joke (1790).
The most well-known was published in
1792, by Mozart's publisher Nikolaus Simrock in Berlin. The game was attributed to
Mozart (almost certainly falselyâ€"see reference). The die rolls randomly selected small sections of music, which would be patched together to create a musical piece. A 'computerised' version of the Musikalisches Würfelspiel making a MIDI file is available
here.
Mozart's manuscript K 516f, written in
1787, consisting of numerous two-bar fragments of music, appears to be some kind of game or system for constructing music out of two-bar fragments, but contains no instructions and there is no evidence that dice were involved.
*
Köchel-Verzeichnis*
Musikalische Wurfelspiele--Dice Games Attributed to Mozart (Google cache of openmozart.net)
*
Mozart - Musical Game in C K. 516f** Levy, David. "Robots Unlimited." Wellesly, MA: A.K. Peters, 2006.
