The piano spoke and the mountain sang: in defense of computer assisted composition and analysis

Computer assisted composition and analysis are powerful tools for creation and research. Such methods, however, are sometimes met with skepticism from other artists. Some believe that computational methods privilege technical features over musicality. Others find computational methods suspect because we live in a time when anyone can ask a generative AI model to write music for them at the push of a button. Acknowledging this, I argue that computational methods may help artists to develop personal working methods, so long as they do things themselves.

In a way, this dissertation can be understood as an attempt to answer the following question: what does the computer enable artists and researchers to do that they could not do without it? Each chapter deals with one specific possibility that computers open up. The first chapter discusses three pieces I composed for Yamaha Disklavier MIDI player-pianos, pianos that can be controlled with computers. The second chapter discusses my recreation of some special tempo techniques first developed by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in his piece Gruppen. The third chapter details a large-scale analysis project in which I made digital versions of 20 pieces composed by Igor Stravinsky during what is known as his “serial period.” I then used the computer to analyze the digital versions of the 20 works. The fourth discusses the way that I used the computer to compose my new work titled Sutter Buttes Theft in Variations. The fifth and final chapter serves as a global conclusion that attempts to tie the four preceding chapters together by pointing to several through lines that bridge the various working methods discussed. Together, these five chapters show a wide variety of working methods that are specifically enabled by embracing computation.