Dicey art

[krusader74]

I wanted to create a list of references to dice in art, music and literature. Here's what I got so far:


Dicing with... Death

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
  -- Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the mariner's ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctic waters. An albatross (a symbol of Christ) appears and leads them out of the ice jam where they are stuck. The mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, ending Part I.

In Part II, the ship gets lost in uncharted waters near the equator. The angry crew makes the mariner wear the albatross around his neck (like a crucifix, as a reminder for his sin). The crew starts to die of thirst ("Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.").

In Part III, the mariner's ship encounters a ghost ship (the "hulk"). On board the hulk, Death plays a game of dice with his wife, the Nightmare Life-in-Death, who wins the game ("The game is done! I've won! I've won!"). The outcome of this dice game determines the mariner's fate: He will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross...

I won't spoil the ending. I just wanted to point out the image of the dice game with Death.

For the 1876 edition of the poem, artist Gustave Doré did a series of engravings. Here is his illustration of the dice game with Death:




Shakespeare plays... at dice

Here's a list of quotes from Shakespeare's plays about dice, dice games, fortunate/unfortunate rolls, and cheating with loaded dice:

• "If Hercules and Lichas play at dice..." (Merchant of Venice II.i.32)
• "Be these the wretches that we play'd at dice for?" (Henry V IV.v.8)
• "Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, The confident and over lusty French Do the low-rated English play at dice" (Henry V Act IV, Prologue, line 19)
• "fullam" (Merry Wives of Windsor I.iii.94): a kind of false dice loaded at the corner
• "...were it good To set the exact wealth of all our states All at one cast? to set so rich a main On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?" (Henry IV, Part I IV.i.45-48)
• "...false As dice are to be wished by one that fixes no bourn 'twixt his and mine" (Winter's Tale I.ii.132)
• "die" (Winter's Tale IV.iii.27)
• "...the very dice obey him" (Antony and Cleopatra II.iii.35)
• "cogging" (Othello IV.ii.132): cheating with loaded dice
• "Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die" (Richard III V.iv.10)
• "You know how much the grosse summe of deuce-ace amounts to... which the base vulgar call three" (Love's Labour's Lost I.ii.48): deuce-ace: roll 2+1=3 on 2d6
• "... well run, dice!" (Love's Labour's Lost I.ii.232)
• "This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms" (Love's Labour's Lost V.ii.326): tables=backgammon
• "Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again / Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein." (Love's Labors Lost V.ii.545): novum=novem quinque, a dice game where the principal throws are the 5 and 9
• "Your lordship is the most patient man in losse, the most coldest that ever tum'd up ace" (Cymbeline II.iii.2)
• "I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life" (All's Well That Ends Well II.iii.85): ames-ace=roll 1+1=2 on 2d6; aka "snake eyes"

Dicing with... Jesus

In 1480, Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez wrote Missa Di dadi, the "Dice Mass."

Sacred renaissance music used polyphonic textures. The foundation, or cantus firmus, was a Gregorian chant, sung by the tenor. On top of this traditional melody, the composer added other vocal parts. In this case, Josquin adds 3 voices, for a total of 4.

But here's the interesting part about this mass, Josquin determines the speed-ratio between the tenor cantus firmus and the other voice parts by rolling dice. And in the musical score, he draws pictures of the dice rolls, as shown here:



Josquin wrote the mass in Milan where dice gambling was rampant.

An ordinary mass has 5 divisions. Here are the divisions, along with the dice rolls/speed ratios:

1. Kyrie 2:1, i.e., the the note-lengths of the cantus firmus is doubled to fit with other vocal parts
2. Gloria 4:1
3. Credo 6:1
4. Sanctus-Benedictus 5:1
5. Agnus Dei

These ratios represent an imaginary game of dice, which goes through several turns until the Sanctus's roll of 5+1=6 ends the game in a victory, a metaphor for the victory of Christ over the sinful gamblers' dice.

You can listen to this beautiful, polyphonic mass on YouTube


What other references to dice can you find in classic art, music and literature?

[Scott Anderson]

That's really cool, thanks for bringing these forward. I remember a while ago someone linked a story about Romans playing with a d20. Dice are awesome.

[sixdemonbag]

Great post. That is all.

[magremore]

Very nice. Exalt.

Stéphane Mallarmé’s “A throw of the dice will never abolish chance”. Besides the title, its last line is pretty cool:

•  “Every Thought emits a Roll of the Dice” (translation Jim Hanson [pdf])

And the opening of Hart Crane’s “At Melville’s Tomb”—

• “Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.”

[krusader74]

Oct 4, 2017 4:24:06 GMT -6 magremore said:

Stéphane Mallarmé’s “A throw of the dice will never abolish chance”.

Thanks for the additional literary references! There is also a 1929 short, silent film inspired by the Mallarmé poem you cited, called Les Mystères du Château de Dé (English: The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice) by Man Ray. It starts by quoting the (French) title of the poem: "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard." I don't comprehend French (or Surrealist cinema!) well enough to understand what's going on, but the basic plot seems to be: Some guys throw a pair of oversized six-sided dice in order to decide what to do. You can watch it on YouTube:

[krusader74]

Mozart's Musikalisches Würfelspiel - A Musical Dice Game for Composing a Minuet

In 1787, Mozart wrote the measures and instructions for a musical composition dice game. The idea is to cut and paste pre-written measures of music together to create a Minuet.

This website allows you to generate your own minuet randomly using Mozart's dice game. The bottom of the page contains links to alternative implementations of the game.

And Wikipedia has more history about Musikalisches Würfelspiel, which predates Mozart.