Bill Pirkle (in reply to me):

>What it does is create themes that should have some melodic interest,
>break them down into motifs, and arranges these into a form (structure)
>which includes themes, development of themal fragments, variations and
>modulations to new keys, and ornamental passages for added interest.  All
>this is done with a varying degree of input (approval/disapproval, etc)
>from the user.  If the user chooses to guide the process, they can claim
>credit for it since their "judgment creativity" went into fashioning it.

It's the "varying degree of input" which concerns me here.

I'm entirely in favour of using computers as tools.  Writers have
thesauruses, spelling-checkers and even grammar-checkers, and I don't see
why composers shouldn't have their equivalents.  Even so, if I want to
deliberately split an infinitive, I don't want a grammar-checker telling
me not to.

What I'm not in favour of is people using computers to do their thinking
for them.  Wasn't it Dijkstra who said "the danger is not that computers
will come to think like people, but that people will come to think like
computers"?

>Actually (not offered pugnaciously) I think it is the judgment of history
>that determines whether or not the composition will live in posterity, not
>the composer.  Much written down music did (does) not pass this test and I
>wonder how much would have been written down if they had tape recorders
>back then..

I disagree.  I don't think that a consensus "judgement of history" exists
any more.  The invention of the CD player has done away with it.  It seems
that anything written down will sooner or later be recorded (probably by
Naxos), people will buy the CD out of curiosity, and some of them will like
what they hear.  The judgement of history was dismissive about Sibelius's
piano music, and didn't mention Kraus's symphonies at all, but I suspect
I'm not the only one to get pleasure from listening to them.

>But there is a new day coming.  The future of CM will not entail writing
>down notes.  The computer takes care of that tedious job by "reading" the
>midi keyboard input or composer mouse clicks and rendering the score to
>print.  Whether one likes midi or not, its value in rendering sheet music,
>instant playback, cut and pasting of parts will make it an invaluable part
>of the future of CM.

As I've said, I'm all in favour of computers as tools.  However, you
have to make sure that using the computer is actually easier than doing
things by hand.  I can type more quickly than I can write, but that's not
universal.  Engineers still sketch their ideas out freehand before entering
them slowly into computer-aided design packages.  I suspect that composers
can write music on paper more quickly than they can enter it into a
computer using a mouse.

>This was actually the point of my inquiry.  There will now be an abundance
>of CM in the future because the tedious task of writing it down is gone,
>Nor is there a requirement to hire a symphony at great expense to perform
>it.  Nor does it have to get published in the traditional way.  Now any
>talented person can write a symphony, piano sonata, concerto, render it to
>print, hear it via midi, and distribute both the midi file and the sheet
>music via the Internet.

And this, I think, gets to the things I'm objecting to.

Consider, first, the fictional composer "Academic Bach" (no relation of any
historical Bach but perhaps an ancestor of P.D.Q.).  If Academic Bach had
ever lived, he would have composed tedious but correct four-part harmony.
Children are still taught to produce harmony in this style, and (as it's
rule-based) computers could churn it out in vast quantities.  It's
write-only - no-one listens to it.

Another fictional composer to consider is the fictional Salieri.  Unlike
the historical Salieri, the fictional Salieri was unfailingly adequate and
never inspired.  It occurs to me that your program could be an automated
version of the fictional Salieri, filling up exabytes of disk space with
supermarket music.

How do you stop your program falling into the hands of the UNtalented?

>The question is, "will these people be wasting their time?" Will it not be
>accepted by CM types ...

(Are there any "types" here? I thought we were all unique.)

>...  for reasons of historical value, lack of composer recognition, etc.
>or will this music be accepted based on its musical value, even if it were
>written by a computer using "expert system" artificial intelligence
>technology.

This is a can of worms.  See the controversies over Elgar's 3rd symphony
and Mahler's 10th (both very fine symphonies IMO) and consider how much
more would have been said if it had been a computer, not a human, that
had produced the "performing versions".

I'm dubious about the prospects for expert system technology coming up with
anything worthwhile here, BTW.  You probably know as much as I do about the
problems of knowledge elicitation even when you've found your expert.  When
some of the experts have been dead for centuries, it's asking a bit much to
try to find the rules they used.  I'm normally even more sceptical about
trendy things like genetic algorithms and neural networks, but my guess
would be that a combination of a genetic algorithm to generate the music
and a neural network to assess it and throw away the junk would be the best
that could be done with current technology.

>I can't believe that on a planet of 6 billion people, there is not another
>Mozart out there right now.  Does he (or she) have a chance.  That's what
>I am trying to find out.  I would think that all of today's composers would
>want to know this too.

Your mention of Mozart reminds me that it's surprisingly unclear from
context whether you're using "classical" to mean the period 1750-1800 or to
mean the entire CM tradition from at least as far back as Dunstable through
to the present day.  I've been assuming the latter, perhaps incorrectly.

>Fortunately, more responses indicate that musical merit has a very high
>rating over other criteria.  Hopefully CM is not isolated in a bubble of
>works written long ago by people who are now famous ...

"Classical" = 1750 to 1800.
"CM" = a living tradition dating back more than 600 years.

>...  and this container of CM is handed down from generation to generation
>without being significantly added to.

I'm not sure where this idea could have come from, but a glance at the
topics of other threads should dispel it quickly.

>BTW I understand that Paul McCartney is writing CM (a symphony I think).
>Will he, who obviously has great musical talent, be successful as a CM
>composer of will he have to wait for a hundred years or so like so many
>great composers.

Which great composers would those be?

Yes, McCartney writes larger-scale works.  It's still an open question
whether he'll be remembered for those as well as for his songs.  FWIW,
I heard a broadcast performance of Standing Stone, and thought it rather
better than the general critical opinion would have you believe.  The
opening was derivative, and the last five minutes or so dire, but I heard
some good music in between which the critics seem to have missed.  It was
sectional, though - more a sequence of short pieces than a single
large-scale work.

>Its perfectly OK for CM to be limited to the bubble I described above.
>That just means that we need another name for what would have been "future
>classical music", and that that music will have to develope a following
>like CM, jazz, rock, etc.
>
>How about HSCM - highly structured contempory music - to describe music
>written today that has not been around long enough to be called "classical".

Once again, "CM" is a shorthand label for a living tradition.  It's not a
particularly informative label, but if you want to refer to something
frequently, it's better to have a shorthand label (however uninformative)
than not.

>Music would be called HSCM if it
>
>- is based on recognizable themes
>- contains development passages using motifs taken from these themes
>- h as a discernable form of repeated passages
>- generally lasts for more than 5 minutes
>- is difficult to perform
>- is available in sheet music form
>- is enjoyable to listen too
>- requires some mental effort to understand
>- is composed by extremely talented but contemporary composers
>
>All of today's "classical" music was HSCM at one time.

I wouldn't disagree, but I might nit-pick.  Kancheli's music isn't always
based on recognisable themes, but it's undoubtedly CM (he's one of the best
living composers IMO).  CM doesn't have to be difficult to perform (think
of Mozart piano sonatas, for example), and there's no minimum time-limit
(or we'd have to exclude Dowland, Chopin and Joplin).

>I truely believe that given midi technology, the computer and the Internet,
>we could have a golden age of HSCM producing music that the people who live
>in 22nd century will call classical music, but will it be popular with CM
>types in its own time, can it be popular with CM types in its own time?.
>
>I hope this clears up any confusion about my inquiry. I guess I care more
>about the future of CM than its past.

Out of pure selfishness, I care more about the present.  It seems that
although there is as much excellent music being written now as at any time
in the past, it's taking longer to work its way through to becoming part of
the standard repertoire.  Part of the problem might be that the concept of
"standard repertoire" is out of date, but I suspect that another part is
that it's becoming easier to produce second-rate music and consequently
harder to discover the gems.

Peter Varley
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