The Conceptualization of Uncertain Compositional Devices is an Enduring One.

A conceptualization of uncertain compositional devices as a set of possibilities; 

each assigned a notational value—a performance schema which draws on the circumstances that originally occasioned it, namely the game of chance, the

die and its faces—is an enduring one.

Within indeterminate composition

the ‘occasional cause’, the

spontaneous metaphysics of the performer/gambler continue to

exert an intuitive hold on thinking concerned with

uncertain eventualities, coloring its interpretation

and its application to diverse situations.

Stripped of

these semantics, the meaning of composition remains

as enigmatic as ever: an idealized construct that neutralizes

contingency by integrating infinite ‘trials’;

or a real property, propensity, or ‘random generator’

As a Composer, the asymmetry of the wager is dramatized in the

figures of the naive punter (performer) who faces every roll of the

die as a hazardous adventure, and the casino manager (composer)

who controls the long game and never loses.

On one hand chance may be figured as subjective epistemological

shortfall, on the other as the object of technical knowledge. This tension between 

musical knowledge and contingency is conceptually condensed in the notion

of probability and latterly in that of risk—a concept belonging to a relatively recent compositional history, but one with immense consequences for modernity.