'aleatory' is a correct and usable word in written English
It is an adjective meaning something that is determined by chance or randomness. For example, "The aleatory nature of the stock market makes predicting its future trends nearly impossible."
And he rightly wonders whether the intellectual elite of any other country, if faced with similar circumstances, would have behaved any better.One criticism is his indulgence in untranslated bits of French, German and Italian; another is his occasional use of words like "aleatory", which smack of translation (Mr Spotts lives in France) and have no place in modern English.
January 29 , 1924Venice, Italy May 8 , 1990Venice, Italy Luigi Nono, (born Jan . 29 , 1924Venice, Italy died May 8 , 1990 Venice), leading Italian composer of electronic, aleatory, and serial music.
Indeed, "noise" itself and silence became elements in composition, and random sounds were used (without prior knowledge of what they would be) by composers, such as the American John Cage, and others in works having aleatory (chance) or impromptu features.
But play, in the aesthetic sense, follows rules, as information theory has demonstrated; even controlled aleatory composition observes some limits.
In indeterminate and aleatory music (the latter type allowing the performer a limited degree of freedom), the notation must offer choices to the performer or be deliberately imprecise.
Blot drawing, technique in the visual arts of using accidental blots or other aleatory stains on paper as the basis for a drawing.
I, for one, found it hard to concentrate on the semi-aleatory music of Witold Lutoslawski while looking over the shoulders of Dennis Hopper.
Four sharply articulated E's, slightly reminiscent of the opening of Beethoven's Fifth, set the symphony in motion; these give way to what seems like a chaos of possibilities, as multiple lines intertwine in "semi-aleatory" style (the notes are specified, but the performers play them at their own pace).
And, at Avery Fisher Hall, Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony in a too rare performance of Witold Lutosławski's Third Symphony, which has the shape of a mountain climb: it begins in thickets of semi-aleatory activity and ends with one of the grandest sonic vistas in the orchestral literature.
Jerry Goldsmith has brought various modernist devices into film music--aleatory passages in the manner of the '60s Polish avant-garde, atonal passagework on the piano, all manner of exotic percussion...His score for "Chinatown" remains his best work.
