The history of the "Music Game" is relatively obscure and unknown, due to the lack of authenticated or sufficiently founded traces until the 1700s, a period in which music had assumed a very defined and fundamental social role. Therefore, the introduction of game systems based on development rules and random elements served a certain type of entertainment and education for a broad audience. It is during this period, in fact, that the first compositions based on dice begin to emerge, called Musikalisches Würfelspiel (Musical Dice Game), which can be considered somewhat interactive. These compositions involved a set of pre-composed rules and/or musical elements, which were assembled or generated, depending on the piece, by a combination of numbers derived from dice rolls. Eventually, dice rolls could also be replaced by the arbitrary choice of a number, which served the same function. During this period, the dissemination of these compositions was relatively widespread, especially, as mentioned, for the function bridging entertainment and education for people with a certain musical inclination. Several examples can be seen, among which the most famous are Carl Philip Emmanuell Bach's Einfall, einen doppelten Contrapunct in der Octave von sechs Tacten zu machen, ohne die Regeln davon zu wissen (A method for making six bars of double counterpoint at the octave without knowing the rules) from 1758, and the K. 516f from 1792 commonly attributed to Mozart, although its authorship is unconfirmed. Moreover, in the Neapolitan area, an Italian version of the Gioco filarmonico o sia maniera facile per comporre un infinito numero de minuetti e trio anche senza sapere il contrappunto (Philharmonic game or easy way to compose an infinite number of minuets and trios even without knowing counterpoint), attributed to Haydn, has been published, although its attribution is even more uncertain.
All these compositions exhibit similar structures and characteristics: a series of tables displaying the possible numerical combinations resulting from dice rolls, or from dice rolls and letters chosen arbitrarily. Lawrence Zibrowski, Music Theory professor at the University of Chicago, calculated the total number of possible compositions within Mozart's work, amounting to 2×11^14 = 759,499,667,166,482 combinations of different possible waltzes, where 2 represents the dice rolls, 11 represents the possible numbers (excluding 1), and 14 represents the number of measures in which to combine the possibilities. This calculation considers a module of 16 measures in which the final two measures of each phrase, measures 8 and 16, have fixed configurations to allow for a coherent and consistent structure, thereby placing a limit on absolute randomness.
Here the instructions of the supposed Mozart piece can be found:
To compose without the least knōledge of Music, German Walzer or Schleifer, by throwing a certain Number with two Dice.
1. The letters A—H placed at the head of the 8 Columns of the Number Tables show the 8. tunes of each part of the Walzer. Viz.A, the first, B, the second, C, the third, &c and the numbers in the Column under the letters, show the number of the time in the notes.
2. the numbers from 2 to 12 show the sum of the number that can be thrown.
3. For instance, in throwing for the first time of the first part of the Walzer, with two dice, the number G, one looks next to that number in the Column A, for the 1+8th time in the notes. This time is written down, and makes the beginning of the Walzer. — For the second time for instance, the number 9, being thrown, turn to the same table Column B, and the number 84 shall be found. This time is put next to the first, & one continues in this manner until the dice shall be thrown all the eight times when likewise the first part of the Walzer shall be finish'd. The sign of repetition is further placed & the second part begun, in case a still longer Walzer be desired, the beginning is again in the same manner, & one continues as long as one pleases.
With the outcome of the dice throws and the grid, a very easy and pleasant composition can be realized immediately with this technological advanced version of the piece:
Follow Caillois's categorization, the type of game employed in these instances falls under the definition of “alea,” due to the extensive role of chance facilitated by the presence of dice. Nevertheless, this element of randomness is offset by a highly sophisticated and robust technical framework within which chance operates, resulting in a genuine and practical product, foolproof and easy to distribute for educational and entertaining purposes.
It is important to remember that during this era, a certain type of methodological rigor and trust in science, mathematics, and more generally in the rationality of human reason, had become widely spread within the Enlightenment movement. Therefore, it is not surprising that such methods, which essentially served to systematize knowledge seemingly as elusive as music, as well as to democratize (at least seemingly) and disseminate a certain ease in compositional practice, in an attempt to make it possible for anyone to write music, gained a certain degree of popularity as "easy games." For composers, on the other hand, such compositions undoubtedly served as a balancing act: learning to construct a formal structure that could contain a high degree of randomization while remaining faithful to a style, in order to always sound recognizable to the player at hand.
