From Musical Ideas to Computers and Back

The link between the computer system and the composer of music is The Program. Composers may think of themselves and their minds and their ideas in any way they please, until they decide to use the computer as an assistant. From that moment on composers must envisage themselves, their minds, and their ideas as systems, since only systems can be translated into that language, the program, which can generate their analog appearances in the computer. Under control of a program, the computer system will simulate all the processes in and of the particular system which the program represents. The main problem thus appears at the beginning and again at the end of the entire proposition: Can composers program musical ideas for a computer, and will the output of the computer contain musical ideas? Another problem, especially for the more philosophically inclined composers, tends to become more acute as their work progresses: If it should be proven that everything is possible, that every sound, every constellation, every logical or random process is available—in short, that everything thinkable can be done, why then go ahead and still do it? In the following pages an attempt is made to deal with some less obvious aspects of such problems, to propose some methods for analyzing them or even solving them.