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The introduction of “random” or “chance” methods into
musical composition depends in general upon an informal application of
these slippery terms to the method of compositional production rather than
to the characteristics of the musical object itself; a proper, or perhaps
more correctly, improper choice of rules of correlation between a non-randomly
generated succession of numbers and a domain of musical entities may create
a more nearly “random” result with regard to a given musical
characteristic
than will the transfer of a greater area of choice to a performer or a
group of performers, who may well be more highly constrained
“machines” than is even the composer.
Milton Babbitt
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