Computer Composers

[penelope]

Hi,
What do you think about computer composed classical music based on the musical designs of Great Composers like Bach, Mozart, Chopin..?
Penelope

[willcowskitz]

I'll simulate the progressing of the thread:

Doof1:  It sucks, classical music is sacred and shouldn't even be touched with a long stick with an asbest glove in the end.
Doof2:  Yeah I totally agree.
Doof3:  I second the earlier posts.
Doof4:  I have an alternative view on this... I think it opens great new possibilities for musical expression, as long as music is not "ripped" but rather variated and developed, like they've always done in classical music.
Doof5:  yeah man!!! techno base 200BPM rondo alla turca is actually much better than the originals, its more honest and not snobby!


Maybe the truth will be somewhere in between.

[berrt]

I'll simulate the progressing of the thread:

Thanks, Will.. saves very much writing and reading for us...

Bye
Berrt

[Brian Healey]

Yeah I totally agree.

 

Peace,
Bri

[ted]

There is a man named David Cope who has made remarkable progress in algorithmic composition of this type. His web site has some interesting examples you can download. I realise that most people have pronounced, almost automatic,  antipathy toward algorithmic composition and I haven't really figured out why that reaction is so widespread. I spent much time writing an algorithm to write and play tonal fugues some years ago. The activity was thoroughly worthwhile and the results were good enough to convince me that people with more brains and time than I have will soon succeed in coding musical personality via syntax.

I think it is important to remember that music creation is a very high level activity of the mind, and includes mental phenomena we don't really yet understand - emotional reaction to abstract structures and so on.  The art, if it can be called that, of algorithmic composition is therefore still very much in its infancy.

My own opinion on the matter is loosely as follows. I think that musical sound is totally abstract and intrinsically meaningless. It develops meaning when a brain imposes meaning on it. When I am moved by music it is because my brain is creating its own semantics from abstract form. Abstract form of any sort can be generated by syntax, that is to say a computer programme, but its associated semantic meaning is relative to the brain which processes it. I do not believe there is any such thing as an invariant musical meaning, existing outside the aggregate of all human brains. Put simply, to take a well known example which actually occurred, Rachmaninoff thought "Three Blind Mice", which he inadvertently recomposed, a very profound musical statement but the English public thought it an amusing ditty and burst into laughter, which act caused Rachmaninoff much chagrin.

So in my view, the challenge of algorithmic composition is to come up with those abstract forms which excite the most semantic response (its exact nature doesn't matter) in the most human brains. Personally, I do not think this will come from painstakingly attempting to imitate the old masters. I rather think that human brains will gradually change to accommodate the new forms coming from computers and slowly impose feelings and meaning on them. Is this not already happening with the widespread use of music packages, synthesisers and trackers ? Meanings are being assigned to the forms which these devices most easily generate - regular metres, linear structures, electronic tricks and so on.  An essentially new aesthetic revolution has taken place, using a primitive form of algorithmic composition, without anybody seeing it as such.