A Proposal for a Cognitive Model of Automatic Intention-Based Music Composition

Automatic music composition is seen as a challenging problem by diierent researchers and there are several generative approaches. However, music experts often express reservations against music autonomously composed by computers: Deterministic systems mostly compose music that sounds rather boring whereas systems based on statistic methods produce music which can be uncontrollably ugly. An interesting way out of this dilemma could be the development of a model that composes music based on the intentional structure of presentations. The support of intentions through music is hardly possible without considering cog-nitive aspects about active and passive musical competences. This paper proposes a cognitively adequate model of automatic intention-based music composition. As such a topic has got many aspects to be considered two points are focused: musical expectancies and coordination of intentional and syntactical structure. 1 Motivation Music accompanies computers since their rst steps. The term computermusic exists already since the 50ies Motte-Haber, 1987]. Computers not only innuence music as an art like many new medias do but, on the other hand, music itself makes also special requirements to the related hard-and software. In this context artiicial intelligence has been growing more and more important, and since the 70ies cognitive musicology exists as an independent eld of research Laske, 1992]. This development has provided one of the basic motivations for the design of systems for automatic composition of music. However, music experts often express reservations against music autonomously composed by computers: Deterministic systems mostly compose music that sounds rather boring whereas systems based on statistic methods produce music which can be uncontrollably ugly. The linkage of musical phenomena to the intentional structure of presentations ooers a solution to this problem, as music is able to support intentions like evoking certain impressions (\calmity", \activity", etc.), announcing new contexts or signalling important events. Automatic composition of music for multimedia presentations has been choosen as 1