Composing Mozart variations with dice

History

W. A. MOZART (1756-1791) 's "Musikalisches W&uumlrfelspiel" (Musical Dice Game) was first published only after the death of Mozart in 1793 by J.J. Hummel in Berlin-Amsterdam, and afterwards several times in different forms. The challenging idea had been known and tried out by other composers before Mozart, such as Ph. Em. Bach and J. Haydn [1]. However, it was Mozart's piece which became famous and successful. (Though neither the original manuscript of the "Musikalisches W&uumlrfelspiel" nor direct references to it by Mozart were ever found, his authorship was never really questioned by publishers or musicologists [2].)

All possible choices were given by Mozart in such a way that by any selection the resulting melody is a pretty minuet fulfilling the harmonic and compositional requirements of Wienese minuets of that time.

In all the publications, it was suggested to use two dice to make the random choices: throw with two dice, and take the sum of the thrown numbers. This is a number between 2 and 12. If you subtract one, you have got a number between 1 and 11, indicating the number of the alternative to choose.

References:
1. H. Gerigk, W&uumlrfelmusik, Zeitschrift f&uumlr Musikalische Wistenschaften, XVI S. 359 f.
2. P. L&oumlwenstein: Mozart-Kuriosa, Zeitschrift f&uumlr Musikalische Wistenschaften, XII 342 f.

This page was last updated on 20 September 1999 by Zsófia Ruttkay (zsofi@cwi.nl)