« Le fait nous a été raconté par Franz Lachner. Celui-ci rend visite à Schubert il le trouve sans aucun entrain au travail. Visiblement content de cette diversion, Schubert l’invite à prendre un café et il commence à moudre les grains dans son moulin à café. Au bout d’un moment il s’écrie «d’avoir trouvé», s’interrompt et se met à décrire les groupes de sons qu’il entend. Suit une question de Lachner : — Est-ce le moulin à café qui compose et non pas la tête ? Réponse de Schubert : — C ’est juste Franz! la tête cherche quelquefois après un motif toute la journée, ce qu’une petite machine trouve en une seconde. »

Martin Davorin-Jagodic, “Le moulin à café de Schubert”

http://jmusic.ci.qut.edu.au/

http://magyar-irodalom.elte.hu/kirnberger/_html/mozart_e.html

Johann Philipp Kirnberger : Der allezeit fertige Menuetten und

Polonoisekomponist (1757)

W.A. Mozart : Musikalisches Würfelspiel (1787)

ILLIAC Suite (1957)Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson

Experiment 2. It consists of eight sections, subdivided in two segments each, with random dynamics. Each section introduces a new counterpoint rule.

1. Random music; no rules2. Skip-stepwise rule; no more than one repeated note3. Cantus firmus starts on C with C chord for opening;

cadence on C with leading tone in one of the four voices; resolution of tritone in VII-6, e.g. F/B must resolve to E/C

4. Octave-range rule5. Only consonant chords permitted except for 6-4 chords;

i.e., harmonic subroutine added6. Parallel unisons, octaves, fifths and fourths still permitted;

melodic subroutine added7. Parallel fourths, 6-4 chords containing tenth still permitted8. Best counterpoint

[ GAT : “Generate and Test” method ]

Txt

Illiac Suite, 2nd movement

“Linear polyphony destroys itself by its very complexity; what one hears is in reality nothing but a mass of notes in various registers [...] This contradiction inherent in polyphony will disappear when the independence of sounds is total. In fact, when linear combinations and their polyphonic superpositions no longer operate, what will count will be the statistical mean of isolated states and of transformations of sonic components at a given moment [...] The result is the introduction of the notion of probability, which implies, in this particular case, combinatory calculus.”

(Xenakis 1955)

“The composers [Stockhausen, Boulez and others] thought they were orthodox serialists but that was only true on paper. In reality they had mass events which they should have listened to in an unbiased manner. On the level of conscious thinking they should have introduced such notions as average density, average duration, colours and so on”

(Varga 1996)

the impasse of serial music

Pierre Boulez, Polyphonie X (1951)

Achorripsis (1956/57)Iannis Xenakis

Stochastic Music (1962)

•ST/48 – 1,240162

•ST/10 – 1,080262

•ST/4 – 1,080262 (string quartet)

•ST/4 – 1,030762 Morsima – Amorisma

•ST/10 – 1,030762 Amorsima – Morisma

•ST/10 – 3,060962 Atrées

•ST/CosGauss Polytope de Cluny

Iannis Xenakis w/ IBM 7090

Blackbox vs GlassboxCommand vs AutomataCAC (CAO) vs AC (EMA, MA)von Neumann vs Wiener

CAC at Ircam : Patchwork, Carla and Open Music

Possible ways of using CAO/AC in composition :

1) as a source of surprise/inspiration (like the coffee mill)

2) to solve (fast) automatic tasks3) use of paradigms issued from IT with a

mapping function4) muzak

“Some very basic forms of generative music have existed for a long time, but as marginal curiosities. Wind chimes are an example, but the only compositional control you have over the music they produce is in the original choice of notes that the chimes will sound. Recently, however, out of the union of synthesisers and computers, some much finer tools have evolved. Koan Software is probably the best of these systems, allowing a composer to control, not one, but one hundred and fifty, musical and sonic parameters, within which the computer then improvises (as wind improvises the wind chimes)”

survey of techniques

0) Simple mathematic processes (interpolations, permutations)

1) Random models (Markov Chains, Random walks)

2) Generative grammars3) Transition networks4) Chaos and Fractals5) Genetic algorithms6) Cellular Automata7) Neural Networks, Constraints systems,

AI ...

Markov Matrix

Wiener Sausage

Iannis Xenakis, Mikka (1971)

http://web.media.mit.edu/~mary/palestrina.html

Generative Grammar

Transition Network

David Cope (EMI)

Strange attractors

Self-similar structures

Rolf Wallin, Stonewave

Cellular Automata in Xenakis “Horos” (1986)

“To some extent, this match is a defense of the whole human race. Computers play such a huge role in society. They are everywhere. But there is a frontier that they must not cross. They must not cross into the area of human creativity. It would threaten the existence of human control in such areas as art, literature and music.”

Garry Kasparov, 1997

“[...] Many representatives of the scientific world see nothing wrong with this and justify their apprehensions by the fact that artist creation is specifically the domain of intuition, of the irrational. They doubt whether this utopian marriage of fire and water would be likely to produce anything valid. If mystery is involved, it should remain a mystery : any investigation, any search for a meeting point is easily taken to be sacrilege”

Pierre Boulez, Technology and the Composer (1977)

“Science, regardless of its deductive or empirical nature, tends at least ideally towards an equivalence of process and result. Music shows no tendency of this kind, for the rigor of the generative process does not guarantee the music coherence of the work”

Horacio Vaggione

« La composition de processus sort du geste quotidien et par cela même nous effraie. Elle est inhumaine, cosmique et provoque la fascination du Sacré et de l'Inconnu, rejoignant ce que Gilles Deleuze définit comme la splendeur du On : un mode d'individuations impersonnelles et de singularités préindividuelles. »

Gérard Grisey, Tempus ex Machina

“Le bricoleur est apte à exécuter un grand nombre de taches diversifiées ; mais, à la différence de l’ingénieur, il ne subordonne pas chacune d’elles à l’obtention de matieres premieres et d’outils concus et procurés à la mesure de son projet : son univers instrumental est clos et la regle de son jeu est de toujours s’arranger avec les ‘moyens du bord’, c’est-à-dire un ensemble à chaque instant fini d’outils et de matériaux, hétéroclites au surplus”

Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage