Computer-Assisted Composition a Short Historical Review
MUMT 303 New Media Production II Charalampos Saitis Winter 2010 Computer-Assisted Composition A short historical review Computer-assisted composition is considered amongst the major musical developments that characterized the twentieth century. The quest for ‘new music’ started with Erik Satie and the early electronic instruments (Telharmonium, Theremin), explored the use of electricity, moved into the magnetic tape recording (Stockhausen, Varese, Cage), and soon arrived to the computer era. Computers, science, and technology promised new perspectives into sound, music, and composition. In this context computer-assisted composition soon became a creative challenge – if not necessity. After all, composers were the first artists to make substantive use of computers. The first traces of computer-assisted composition are found in the Bells Labs, in the U.S.A, at the late 50s. It was Max Matthews, an engineer there, who saw the possibilities of computer music while experimenting on digital transmission of telephone calls. In 1957, the first ever computer programme to create sounds was built. It was named Music I. Of course, this first attempt had many problems, e.g. it was monophonic and had no attack or decay. Max Matthews went on improving the programme, introducing a series of programmes named Music II, Music III, and so on until Music V. The idea of unit generators that could be put together to from bigger blocks was introduced in Music III. Meanwhile, Lejaren Hiller was creating the first ever computer-composed musical work: The Illiac Suit for String Quartet. This marked also a first attempt towards algorithmic composition. A binary code was processed in the Illiac Computer at the University of Illinois, producing the very first computer algorithmic composition.
[Show full text]