The Role of the Computer in Academic Contemporary Music ~Focusing Mainly on IRCAM and Its Surroundings~

For centuries, composers have tried to discover new forms of musical expression. After Western music evolved from its use of a modal to a tonal organizational system, tonality eventually gave way to bitonality and polytonality in the second half of nineteenth century, and subsequently atonality in the first half of twentieth century. During the twentieth century, composers paid attention to forms of media that can not be written in staff notation. For example musique concrete, the expression of timbre and complicated calculations became possible with the development of the computer. This paper first describes how the computer became connected to academic contemporary music in the stream of music history. I will also explain how composers of today have developed their creations (compositions) with computers by examining the case at IRCAM in Paris.