A Musikalisches Würfelspiel (Musical dice game) was a system for using dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

 to randomly 'generate' music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

. These games were quite popular throughout Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

 in the 18th century. Several different game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

s were devised, some that did not require dice, but merely 'choosing a random number

Number

A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....

.' Other famous examples are Johann Philipp Kirnberger's The Ever Ready Composer of Polonaises and Minuets (1757 1st edition; revised 2nd 1783) and Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

's Philharmonic Joke (1790).

Mozart's Alleged Musikalisches Würfelspiel

The most well-known was published in 1792, by Mozart's publisher Nikolaus Simrock in Berlin. The game was attributed to Mozart, but this attribution has not been authenticated (Cope 7). The dice rolls randomly selected small sections of music, which would be patched together to create a musical piece. A 'computerised' version of the Musikalisches Würfelspiel making a MIDI file is available here.

Mozart's manuscript K 516f, written in 1787, consisting of numerous two-bar fragment

Fragment

Fragment may refer to:* A small part/portion broken off something; debris* Fragment , all the data necessary to generate a pixel in the frame buffer* Sentence fragment, a sentence not containing a subject or a predicate...

s of music, appears to be some kind of game or system for constructing music out of two-bar fragments, but contains no instructions and there is no evidence that dice were involved.