Composers on Mathematical Music
Subtext 5977560
Since World War II, computer science has invaded the domain of human activities. The arts, and in particular music, have not been overlooked by this tidal wave. Slowly in the 1950s, then accelerating, the computer and its peripherals have been spreading like mushrooms in the centers of musical activity, upsetting the attitudes of composers to a far greater extent than did the revolution of the tape recorder, which originated the first physically permanent memory of sound. The danger is great of letting oneself be trapped by the tools and of becoming stuck in the sands of a technology that has come like an intruder into the relatively calm waters of the thought in instrumental music. For we have already a long list of attempts at composition by the computer. But what is the musical quality of these attempts? It has to be acknowledged that the results from the point of view of aesthetics are meager and that the hope of an extraordinary aesthetic success based on extraordinary technology is a cruel deceit. Indeed, little of this music goes beyond the recent rich findings in instrumental music or even beyond the babblings of electronic music in the 1950s.

Why? In my opinion, the reasons for these failures are multiple, but we can single out two essential ones:

  1. The musicians using computers are cripples in general theoretical ideas, especially in mathematics, physics, and acoustics. Their talent, whenever it exists, is powerless in penetrating the virgin domain where only abstract thought would be capable of guiding their experimental attempts, and it grasps but shadows.
  2. The scientists having access to computer technology are sucked in by a sort of inferiority complex in front of the aesthetic aspect of music and, not having had to struggle on the aesthetic plane, are inexperienced and lacking and have no idea where they should be heading. Consequently, they fool around with mathematical and technical gadgets with the net musical result of very little, if any, artistic interest since they are not able, and do not know how, to employ talent when they have it.

In these two cases, artistic talent, as it can clearly be seen, plays—and must play—a determining role.

To escape from these impasses, the remedies are obvious: the first category of musicians should make an apprenticeship in the necessary sciences, and the second category should plunge into the delicate questions of talent and aesthetics, constantly experimenting with them by composing. But this will not suffice. It seems to me that the moment has come to attempt to penetrate more profoundly and at the same time more globally into the essence of music to find the forces subjacent to technology, scientific thought, and music.

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. . . for music and the visual arts of tomorrow it will be necessary to form artists in several disciplines at the same time, such as mathematics, acoustics, physics, computer science, electronics, and the theoretical history of music or the visual arts. . . .

Iannis Xenakis


Composers on Mathematical Music: A Subtext Poem

Other Work by John Greschak

Public Domain