Leonardo

The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator

Author(s): Sever Tipei
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1989), pp. 189-195
Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575227
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The Computer:
A Composer's Collaborator

SeverTipei

D uring its more than three decades of exist- introducing some degree of
ence, the field of computer-assisted composition has com- randomness into their music.
ABSTRACT
prised a variety of approaches. One such way of using Interestingly, Cage's thinking
computers to produce music, involving a rather complex has its roots in Zen Buddhism
Theauthor expresseshis
program called MP1, is presented here. This approach (whose similarities with aspects preferences for'comprehensive'
attempts to take advantage of what the computer can do of quantum theory often have computer-assisted compositionpro-
beyond mimicking some of the workings of the human been noted) [1], and Xenakis's grams,foranexperimental atti-
mind, and it subordinates all compositional decisions to an ideas start with borrowings tude,andforusingspecificcom-
putercapabilitiessuchas the
aesthetic consistent with a certain world view. This aesthetic from thermodynamics (such as ofrandom eventsand
production
incorporates, among other things, the beliefs that probability distributions and ofmultiplevariants ofthesame
* composers are more than artisans or entertainers. Like random walks), a major chal- work.Hebriefly discussestheaes-
scientists they try to understand and explain the uni- lenge to classical mechanics. theticsbehind MP1,hiscomputer
verse and our place in it; but the tools they employ are The avoidance of strict de- program formusical composition,
andthenpresents somebasicfea-
at the same time less rigorously logical and more com- terminism and the use of prob- turesoftheprogram. Adiscussion
pelling than those of scientists. abilities may lead to another ofhowMP1mayfacilitate a non-
* composing implies making deliberate choices-not proposition: by allowing for the traditional
approach tocomposition
is illustrated
withexamples from
only at the detail level, when determining what sound existence of multiple, equally
a pieceforfivetubas.
comes next, but also at a more general level; when decid- variants of a "Cuniculi",
acceptable work,
ing what the piece stands for. Theoretically, at least, the one no longer concentrates on
decision process can be analyzed, no matter how intri- writing a particular piece but
cate it might turn out to be, and the composer is respon- rather on generating an entire
sible for the work's connotations. 'class of compositions'. The term was introduced in the early
* structure and form are not inherent in reality; they are 1960s by European composers of aleatory music (music that
projections of our mind trying to comprehend it. contains some indeterminacy at the performance level): the
* indeterminacy and uncertainty are fundamental fea- performer is asked to make decisions related either to the
tures of the physical world as we presently understand form of the piece (its sections can be arranged in more than
it. one sequence) or to elements of detail (duration, pitch,
Although the parallel between science and music might dynamics, etc. are only approximately notated). 'Alea' or
seem obvious, the fact is that, in our society, there is a large 'dice' refers to the fact that such decisions are out of the
gap between the two domains. Few scientists are familiar hands of the composer. Originally a class of compositions
with music composed within the past 60 years, and most designated all possible works resulting from the interpreta-
musicians are oblivious to the description of nature sug- tion of instructions and symbols offered in lieu of a tra-
gested by twentieth-century physics. Moreover, a large per- ditionally notated score. From the beginning, Henri Pous-
centage of the music written today reflects (beyond tech- seur and Karlheinz Stockhausen have referred to aleatory
nique or aesthetics) a mentality at least 250 years old whose
frame of reference is a rigid determinism, typical of New- Fig. 1. Vector
space.A soundis pitch
ton's classical mechanics and of the baroque period. Unfor-
representedas a
tunately, this remark applies not only to the musical estab- point in a multi-
lishment but also to a number of independent-minded dimensional space. ,I
/ i
artists who are considered to be at the vanguard of musical The dimensions or
bases of the vector
experimentation.
This is why some of the ideas John Cage and Iannis space are the quali-
ties or parameters
Xenakis proposed in the early 1950s, independently of each of the sound.
other, are still relevant. One could say that, in spite of their Usually, sounds
evident differences, these two composers share the desire to are considered to
I, time
distance themselves from the detailed realization of their
own musical thoughts. Both composers accomplish this by
be points in a
space with five or
; / 1,
I

more dimensions,
I /
Sever Tipei (composer), Computer Music Project, School of Music, University of such as duration
i /
?/
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2136 Music Building, 1114 West Nevada St., Urbana, IL (time), pitch,
61801, U.S.A.
dynamics, timbre
Received 5 October 1987. and articulation. dynamics

? 1989 SAST
PergamonPresspic.PrintedinGreatBritain.
0024-094X/89 $3.00+0.00 LEONARDO, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 189-195, 1989 189
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 skills were applied toward making the
most out of the inherited system. This
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
is certainly true for music up to Bee-
pitch number 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 thoven, but it also applies to music of
the nineteenth century, when the
31 1 4 7 10
ratio of innovation to conformity was
32 2 5 8 11 admittedly higher (though it never
0 6 trespassed the limits of common prac-
60
tice). By contrast, the composer of a
31 u32 u 6o 0 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 class of compositions concentrates on
2 6 10 defining materials as well as on devis-
42
ing rules equivalent to traditional
(3i u 32 u 60) n 42 0 1 4 5 7 8 11 techniques and forms. The craftsman-
ship no longer consists of polishing
details but of clearly presenting an ele-
scale C C# E F G G# B gant structure with the potential for
effective realizations. With the intro-
weights 5 1 2 3 4 1 2
duction of variable degrees of uncer-
tainty and the use of entropy as a struc-
tural element (as Xenakis, Lejaren,
Fig. 2. Pitch sieve expressed by the logical function: (31 u 32 u 60) rn42. The figure Hiller and others have done), the role
shows the contribution of each term of the logical expression to the final result. Starting
with all the chromatic sounds possible within an octave, the sieve operates a selection lead- of the composer is modified. The pub-
ing to the scale on the bottom. The weights establish a hierarchy among the elements of lic is also placed in a realm where
the resulting scale. Here, the degrees I, V and IV (tonic, dominant, and subdominant) of causality and determinism work in less
the scale are given more weight in a mock reference to tonality. obvious ways, where a number of so-
pitch/dynamics/timbre lutions compete for the right to be
heard, and from where the self-
: i assured and arrogant repository of a
l t
unique truth has disappeared. Beyond
m is I~ ~ pattern2 this point, a computer's contribution
aL)
a) , I in deciding the actual outcome of the
I'
piece becomes at least as welcome as
,!
.I i--------- - . that of a human mind.
! I
I
Ia
!
I
I t COMPUTER-ASSISTED
I # I COMPOSITION
I t
i!
i
I
I I A unique type of collaboration be-
t
aL)
I t
tween composer and computer is es-
K
pattern tablished when the computer is used
11
aL)
V) pattern ' , 1
to produce a piece or a fragment of a
s , piece in its entirety. Such an ap-
.i . proach, which I call 'comprehensive',
0 m n p time is characterized by the fact that the
composer conceives the piece, defines
all the logical operations to take place
to - tm-* sieve A during its writing and feeds in all the
tm- tn- sieve A u sieve B data necessary for its realization. The
computer then becomes a black box
tn- tp-- sieve B that provides a way of testing these
Fig. 3. Conflicting sieves and patterns in a situation that could be handled through the elements. Interactive programs can fit
idea of 'catastrophe'. A steady increase over time of y will eventually produce an abrupt
the above description, too, if the
switch from sieve A to sieve B and from patten 1 to pattern 2. During the moment of
'indecision' (tm to tn), both sieves and both patterns need to be allowed to exist human input is used, not to correct
errors during the realization of the
piece, but to make significant com-
compositions as "fields of possibility" at the structural level that transforms positional choices at predetermined
[2] and "statistical compositions of the meaning of the word 'craft'. In the moments. A comprehensive approach
can be contrasted with programs that
fields" [3]; Umberto Eco has de- past, the common-language compos-
scribed them as "the actualization of a ers rarely questioned the validity of deal with only some aspects of the
series of consequences whose prem- universally employed musical forms composition, are limited in scope and
ises are firmly rooted in the original (such as sonata, fugue, rondo, etc.), require the composer's intervention
data provided by the author" [4]. techniques (harmony, counterpoint, during the final assemblage of the
orchestration, etc.) or materials musical work.
Compared with traditional music,
these works exhibit a change of focus (scales, modes, meters, etc.); their Using comprehensive programs,

190 Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator

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musicologists and theorists have mod-
eled aspects of traditional music: spe-
cies counterpoint, four-part baroque
chorales and serial techniques, to give
only a few examples. Lately, artificial
intelligence (AI) tools have been em-
ployed to create expert systems that try
to simulate decision-making processes
in these well-defined historical styles.
It is easy to see why this type of appli-
cation does not appeal to most com-
posers: for them, a more attractive
proposition is to use the computer in
an innovative way. Instead of automat-
ing established procedures and trans-
forming the composer into the super-
visor of a music factory assembly line,
one should regard the computer as an
associate, or at least an assistant, and
exploit its specific capabilities cre-
atively.
One such capability is to produce
random events. Since people are bet-
ter than machines at creating and or-
ganizing musical structures, and since
machines can handle randomness and
smooth transitions between random-
ness and preexistent structure better
than people, it makes sense to explore
this avenue. Elements of chance intro-
duced through probability distribu-
tions or through other means allow
composers not only to distance them-
selves from the artistic product, in the
sense pioneered by Cage and Xenakis,
but also to experiment with the out-
come more objectively. The specula-
tive and experimental aspect of some
computer-assisted composition proj-
ects has been pointed out by Herbert
Brun, Hiller, Xenakis and others [5].
As Frank Dietrich has observed, the
computer also enhances the artist's
ability to set up 'thought-experiments'
[6]. In science, these are mental ex-
aminations of experiments that, for
practical reasons, cannot be per-
formed; earlier in this century, they
were used by Einstein and Bohr in
their famous debate on the meaning
of quantum theory. In a sense, artists
are always constructing imaginary
worlds, 'parallel' or 'aesthetic' reali-
ties, testing ideas and their implica-
tions through the creative process.
The computer's power allows both
artists and scientists to probe faster
and more thoroughly than before,
and within realms they once were not
able to reach. It also provides them
with the means of scrutinizing their
own way of thinking. Flaws in the con-
cept behind the work or in the way the
rules of the game are devised and ap-
plied will be revealed quickly, because
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the computer's choices depend only
on the instructions contained in the
code, not on implicit criteria inferred
from alien considerations. In other
words, the conditioning, the preju-
dices, that inevitably (whether we are
aware of it or not) influence our deci-
sions will not be present in a com-
puter's 'mind', unless put there as part
of the program. Quite often, when we
test or first employ a new routine, our
results do not match the anticipated
outcome because of some circum-
stance that was assumed but never
stated explicitly, or because the effects
that boundary conditions might pro-
duce were overlooked. Programmers
will recognize these trials as trivialand
inevitable. But in the eyes of artists
using computers they have an added
meaning, since they often show how
the integrity of the creative process
can be corrupted without us even no-
ticing it. To reinforce a point made
earlier, the work's connotations, its
implied statements, can be better
tested when the composer's preroga-
tive to make choices is shared with the
computer. In this context, the use of
randomness in the arts provides a
realistic way of experimenting that
includes the possibility of accidents, of
deviations from an abstract norm.
Another computer skill that people
can hardly match is the ability to mass-
produce variants of the same work or,
in other words, to realize a large num-
ber of pieces belonging to the same
class of compositions. On one hand,
the aforementioned rift between the
composer and the artistic product al-
lows for an honest inquiry; on the
other hand, the fact that an actual
realization depends on a particular se-
quence of random numbers, as usually
Fig. 4. Evolution
of entropy in entropy
"Cuniculi".
Durations,
C6f
pitches and
dynamics are
increasing in an
almost evenly C5f
linear fashion
along with
entropy. I con- C4 n7f
sidered this
redundancy
necessary in C3p
order to make
the 'arrow of
time' and its C2pp
direction
obvious.
Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator
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is the case, provides the composer with
a fast way of evaluating the algorithm
thoroughly. Since the composer does
not intervene in the way choices are
made, and since different sequences
can be obtained simply by changing
the seed number (the first number on
which the sequence depends), vari-
ants of the same piece or fragment of
a piece can be generated rather easily.
An almost equally facile way to pro-
duce distinct members of a class of
compositions is to change only slightly
the data fed in, keeping the basic struc-
ture of the work constant and, more
important, using exactly the same pro-
gram. This second procedure was ex-
ploited in the late 1960s by Hiller in
his AlgorithmsI. More recently, Hiller
repeated this experiment in Algorithms
III [7]. Cases in which either the data
is modified to a greater or lesser extent
or a different seed is used for the ran-
dom function are illustrated by pieces
written by, among others, Gottfried
Michael Koenig and Xenakis [8].
Human intervention in this process
can result in a more sophisticated (if
not 'better') kind of music. If, how-
ever, one opts for the purity of the
process and lets the computer pro-
duce the entire piece, it becomes clear
that modifying the final output to fit
subjective preconceptions is equiva-
lent to changing the outcome of a
scientific experiment. 'Cheating' is a
word that comes to mind, along with
'inanity' for not taking advantage of
one of the most useful aspects of the
partnership with the computer. Then,
what can or should a composer do
when finding the computer's output
disappointing? If the composer can
determine that the unsatisfactory
result is due to mistakes in the logic
time
191
 (program) or to inconsistencies in the
data used, portions of the code can be
rewritten or the data can be changed.
However, there is alwaysa chance that
an error-free algorithm, consistent
with the composer's intentions, will
deliver unusual, strange and unex-
pected results that clash with his or her
own biases. Then, regardless of the
course of action taken by the com-
poser, the computer will have proven
its real utility. It is the combined use
of randomness and the comprehen-
sive approach that emancipates the
computer, transforming it from an
assistant into a collaborator.
If the employment of the computer
is reduced to its taking over some of
the chores the composer does not
want to bother with, it hardly makes
sense to utilize it at all: the amount of
time and energy spent on program-
ming will seldom be justified by the
production of a unique work. Such ef-
forts pay off only if one of the follow-
ing happens:
* the composer emerges enriched
from this association (by ob-
taining either a deeper insight
into the process or unforeseen
results);
* the computer is asked to generate
large quantities of music (mass-
producing members of a class of
composition; realizing long and
highly complex pieces or many
works using the same or very sim-
ilar algorithms);
* the computer is assigned tasks it
can accomplish better than hu-
mans (such as handling random-
ness and smooth transitions
between randomness and struc-
ture).
Although these might not be the
latest ideas to appear in the field, they
are particularly relevant today by vir-
tue of the fact that they mirror systems
that contemporary science uses to de-
scribe the physical world. Such paral-
lels between, in Eco's words, "scientific
methodology and poetics" [9] are re-
assuring in a culture where science is
concerned with things like 'virtualpar-
ticles' and with laws that seem "more
and more unreasonable and more and
more intuitively far from obvious"
[10], while most of the artistic commu-
nity lives in the mechanistic, clock-
work and more comfortable universe
of Newton. It is my opinion that trends
fashionable at this moment, such as
the use of generative grammars and AI
techniques, as well as concepts bor-
rowed from cognitive psychology, rep-
192 Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator
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resent, from a philosophical and ar-
tistic standpoint, a regressive orienta-
tion, in spite of their obvious value as
computational procedures. These
trends, which are almost exclusively
centered on the ideas of hierarchy
and methodical transformations,
being concerned with perception and
cognition, imply an anthropocentric
point of view governed by determinis-
tic logic and human mental habits.
They also ignore what is arguably the
most important and radical departure
from the traditional, 'common-sense'
mentality that has dominated Western
culture for centuries: the acknow-
ledgement of uncertainty and indeter-
minacy as basic characteristics of the
world we inhabit. Composition cannot
afford to overlook Cage and Xenakis
any more than physics can afford to
overlook quantum theory. The fact
that what science accepts as manifest
is regarded in music at best as merely
fanciful shows that, presently, the lat-
ter is less in tune with society's con-
sensus and premonitions than with its
memories.
MP1
To translate these ideas into music,
one needs the appropriate tools. MP1
is a collection of such devices that I
have developed for composition. It is
a comprehensive program that has
been in use since 1973, and it is a work
in progress to which new features are
added constantly. Taking advantage of
the formalization introduced by
Xenakis and Hiller [11], it considers
music as a collection of events in a vec-
tor space where time is one of the di-
mensions (Fig. 1). Thus, each sound is
considered in terms of a given set of
qualities or parameters (including du-
ration, frequency, amplitude and tim-
bre) that can be analyzed separately as
well as in their interaction with one
another. This framework is general
enough to allow the user a) to include
non-musical temporal events [12],
b) to either write a piece sound by
sound or determine the arrangement
of its sections in larger structures [13],
and c) to add new capabilities without
disturbing its foundation.
In MP1 all sound parameters are
treated in a similar way:for each sound
there are as many passes through the
central loop of the program as there
are parameters. Aware that skepticism
has been voiced regarding the validity
of the vector space concept in music
(criticism justified especially when
considering the quantizing of timbre),
I feel that these objections should be
directed toward the way parameters
are usually defined and not to the
soundness of the notion itself. Xenakis
and Hiller have established a formal
way of thinking that is still valid today
because of its generality, elegance
and, especially, its relevance to music.
In MP1 'choices' are made by
matching random numbers with
probabilities assigned to possible out-
comes. This is refined through self-
correcting feedback mechanisms
overseeing the coherence of a part
with itself and with other parts, the
actual versus the desired density of
events, and numerous other aspects of
the composition. Other restrictions
are also available, the most powerful
of which, 'sieves', are either logical
expressions being evaluated at execu-
tion time or arraysand matrices where
information is stored ahead of time.
More sophisticated utilizations involve
establishing a hierarchy among sieve
elements, instead of a coarser pass/
no-pass situation, and correlating two
or more parameters. Such weighted
sieves may be used to select possibili-
ties out of a continuum and establish
preferences among them (scales and
their constituents' relative impor-
tance), or to describe incompatibili-
ties between sound parameters (or-
chestration constraints) [14]. Figure 2
shows a weighted seive, a logical ex-
pression, using the concept of 'con-
gruence' modulo m. Two integers are
'congruent' or 'equivalent' modulo m
if their difference is a multiple of m;
the remnants resulting from the divi-
sion by m are numbers between 0 and
m - 1 and are called 'residual classes'
[e.g. 2 - 5 (mod 3) since 5: 3 =1 with
remnant 2]. In the figure, the main
digits are modulo terms and the in-
dices denote residual classes; using the
preceding example: 5 = 2 8 =11 ...
(mod 3). The individual elements'
weights are derived from the weights
assigned to each member of the
logical expression (only the resulting
weights are shown in this figure).
Another option, which further nar-
rows the range of possibilities gener-
ated by the probabilistic level, are 'pat-
terns', strings of sounds or transitional
matrices (Markov chains). Patterns
may be reproduced with variable de-
grees of accuracy; when 100-percent
accuracy is needed, a special routine
performs complex searches, assessing
their chance of success, and then takes
over assigning one by one the values
in the pattern. However, if the copying
proves impossible as a result of other
restrictions (for example, the range of
an instrument will not allow a certain
sequence of pitches in any possible
transposition), the control is returned
to the main loop and the pattern
abandoned.
Sieves and patterns describe some-
times conflicting types of music that
cannot be accommodated at the same
time. Even if such a sieve and pattern
coexisted for a while, the balance
eventually could be upset under pres-
sure from the probabilistic back-
ground, and the music could change
its character according to the preva-
lent device (Fig. 3). Similarly, one pat-
tern, out of two or more having equal
chances of being followed, could be-
come preponderant at a certain point
and force the piece to go in its partic-
ular direction. From a compositional
point of view, these are interesting
situations in which an unstable equi-
librium is disturbed through min-
uscule chance variations. Since the ex-
amples above involve discontinuities
or abrupt changes brought about
during moments of indecision, they
can be described in terms of Ren6
Thom's 'catastrophe theory' [15].
Another composer who has written
music based on this theory is Aurel
Stroe [16].
MPl's features define a hierarchy
congruent with the belief that the
human mind is a limited apparatus
that uses form as a stratagem to help it
cope with reality. The absence of form
(randomness and probability, in MP1)
is an underlying, all-encompassing
actuality from which the discriminat-
ing mind selects its crutches (sieves
and patterns): "All that has a form is
an illusive existence ... all form is no-
form" [17]. This built-in bias does not
prevent MP1 from accommodating
both chance and structure-a struc-
ture that can include not only recog-
nizable motive transformations, self-
similarities and the like but also
higher-level algebraic entities (such as
group transformations). Thus, psy-
chology, perception and memory are
scaled down and put into a more real-
istic perspective.
With each additional option, the
style-blind vector-space framework of
the program gives way to more idiosyn-
cratic approaches to composition.
Some of these benefit from using
MPl's specific features while promot-
ing imaginative points of view: for
localtimearrow
Fig. 5. Karl Popper's representation of Ludwig Boltzmann's view of the 'arrow of time'.
The passing of time has no absolute direction and is defmied only locally by increases in
entropy. (Redrawn from Prigogine [23]).
0 8
If ^- r r Gr
values 0 5 7 1011
intervals 5 2 3 1
Periodic(ostinato)andsymmetric(nonretrogradable)
sieve:
(60 u 80) u [31 n (43 u 82 u 85)] u [32 n (41 u 83 u 86)]
Fig. 6. Duration sieve in "Cuniculi". The rhythm produced by the sieve is both periodic
(repetitive) and symmetrical (palindrome).
instance, in "Maiden Voyages" [18] a
counterpoint of textures and the form
of the piece are derived from the
'observer's' (composer's) perspective
defining simultaneous events and the
contemporaneous presentation of
eight versions of a percussion piece
(class of compositions) inspired by
Everett's article in TheMany WorldsIn-
terpretation of QuantumMechanics[19].
Another example of an original solu-
tion facilitated by MP1 is discussed be-
low in more detail.
THE ARROW OF TIME,
ENTROPY AND
PSEUDO-RANDOM
NUMBERS
The class of compositions concept is
reinforced by Xenakis's division of
musical structures into outside-time,
temporal and in-time algebras, or 'ar-
chitectures', as he calls them [20]. The
outside-time category refers to ab-
stract ways of organizing sounds (such
as scales or probability distributions)
before they are used in an actual piece.
The temporal group includes struc-
tures defined on the time or base
localtimearrow
16 24
C r^ Vr r i
1314 17 19
2 1 3 2 5
dimension of the vector space (such as
rhythms). Finally, the in-time algebra
represents the actual realization of a
piece, or the way outside-time and
temporal architectures can be experi-
enced. Xenakis also points out that,
from the Middle Ages to the twentieth
century, the focus of Western music
has gradually shifted away from out-
side-time and toward in-time struc-
tures. According to him, the process
has reached a climax with the tone-
row system (in which a particular se-
quence of intervals, usually involving
all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale, is
the main organizing principle), which
is concerned almost exclusively with
the rules by which sounds follow each
other.
Xenakis also claims that the use of
various probability laws restores the
balance by making the composer con-
sider again the invariable, atemporal
order of things. Going one step
further, we might say that the com-
poser of a class of compositions (who
deals only vaguely with the in-time
aspect) plays God, to some extent, by
creating autonomous entities that
might even depart from his or her
original plans.
A new question arises, then: How

Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator 193

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 different from one another are these
members of a class of compositions?
Are they independent works or not?
The answer, in traditional music
terms, is that they are more distinct
than two performances of the same
piece by independent artists (e.g. two
renditions of the "Appassionata"),but
more similar than two works of identi-
cal form by the same author. Using
another comparison, they are like
faces in a crowd: seen from afar the
faces have similar general features but
close up, each is different from the
other. The degree of resemblance is
very much in the eyes of the observer
and depends on how familiar with the
observed quantity he or she is.
In our case, the observer is the
audience, which can perceive the work
only as a temporal succession of
events, in its in-time aspect, since the
computer program and the data (the
outside-time architecture) are usually
not available in a concert setting. In-
time realizations come alive with the
help of a sequence of random num-
bers that, through its continuity, lends
consistency to the work.
Random numbers are a close ap-
proximation of chance since, by defi-
nition, they are patternless. However,
every time the routine producing
them starts with the same 'seed', or
original number fed in by the user, it
delivers exactly the same sequence.
That is why, in this case, 'pseudo-
random numbers' seems a more ap-
propriate term. All runs of the pro-
gram using the same data and the
same seed will result in exactly the
same output, which is useful when one
tries to 'debug' the code.
There is an apparent paradox here:
the choices leading to a given variant
194 Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of the work depend on chance (as ex-
pressed by the illogical connections
between successive numbers), but the
sequence itself is a unique causal
chain. It follows, then, that when
larger fragments of a piece are gener-
ated in a certain order but reassem-
bled in a different one, ignoring the
continuity of the random sequence,
the product will resemble a composite
portrait created by a police artist more
than a real person's face. Fortunately,
no one in the audience will be able to
detect the difference.
Actually, if the piece in question is
a continuous process (through-com-
posed music), it will be practically im-
possible to splice together fragments
resulting from two or more sets of
computations without the kind of
cheating mentioned before. For a sec-
tional work, the splicing will be harder
to detect since breaks in the dis-
course-time limits to the existence of
given musical textures-will already
have been anticipated.
It may be argued that this concern
for the integrity of a sequence, for the
'personality' of a work, is superfluous
and Byzantine in its dwelling on theo-
retical details that could have no or
little practical impact on the audience.
Nevertheless, through them the com-
poser could find interesting and novel
ways of organizing the music and of
handling the form of the work.
An example is "Cuniculi", a piece
for five tubas, which I wrote with MP1
[21]. 'Cuniculi' are underground pas-
sages such as burrows or mines; more
specifically, the term refers to pre-
historic underground drains around
ancient Rome. A stanza from Ezra
Pound's "Canto CXVI" [22], which I
set to music, uses this word:
Fig. 7. John
Wheeler's draw-
ing shows how,
in accordance
with some
interpretations
of quantum
mechanics, a
present-day ob-
server influences
events that hap-
pened far in the
past history of
the universe.
(Redrawn from
Paul Davies [241.)
Butthe record
the palimpsest-
a littlelight
in greatdarkness-
cuniculi-
Mypiece proposes a wayof contrast-
ing the objective flow of time with the
subjective (or experiential) time set
forth with the help of an unbroken
sequence of pseudo-random num-
bers. The objective time is defined
through a steady, continuous increase
in entropy redundantly followed by
smooth, linear variations of other par-
ameters (Fig. 4). The second law of
thermodynamics states that entropy,
which measures the degree of dis-
order in a closed system, always in-
creases with the passing of time; con-
temporary physics recognizes this as
proof that there is an 'arrow of time'
directed from the past toward the fu-
ture. The physicist Ludwig Boltz-
mann, who spent many years trying to
prove the existence of such an arrow,
changed his mind toward the end of
his life in favor of a more intriguing hy-
pothesis: the flow of time is only a con-
vention, and local arrows, which can
point in either direction, are defined
in the universe by regional increases
of entropy (Fig. 5) [23].
"Cuniculi"pays homage to this pro-
vocative and unconventional way of
thinking, which certainly makes sense
from a psychological point of view.
The piece starts from a middle point
of relative simplicity and organization
and sets out to explore both future
and past. Both incursions into the
past, or memories, and incursions into
the future, or imagined events, are
characterized by an increase in
entropy. In accordance with Boltz-
mann's vision, the further the trip in
any direction, the less precise the im-
ages delivered: recollections become
fuzzier and anticipated occurrences
harder to describe with precision. All
this happens, however, against an
easily perceived background consist-
ing of steadily growing complexity and
deteriorating musical organization.
A probability wave,which is both pe-
riodic and symmetrical, controls the
rhythmic structure of the piece:
sounds can start only at the moments
defined by it. Figure 6 shows such a
probability wave, which is, for the ex-
ample's sake, shorter and much sim-
pler than those controlling the rhyth-
mic structure of the piece. It is a
weighted sieve that takes the form of a
logical expression. In more traditional
musical terms, the sieve defines an
ostinato (repetitive figure) and a non-
retrogradable (palindrome) rhythm.
Because of compositional considera-
tions, the actual sieves used in "Cu-
niculi" are both more detailed and
longer than this example, and con-
sequently harder to detect. The logi-
cal expressions describing them have
up to 103 terms and operations each.
Because the rhythm is both repeti-
tive and similar to itself when read
backwards (as evidenced by the sym-
metry of the durations shown in Fig.
6), beginnings and endings of periods
(as well as their midpoints) are equiv-
alent; therefore, skips over an integer
number of periods cannot be de-
tected. This is a 'time machine' that
allows incursions into both past and
future. Or, to put it differently, at privi-
leged moments one can journey
through time by means of mental as-
sociations, like Proust biting from his
madeleine. Musically, these associa-
tions (cuniculi or time burrows), facili-
tated by similarities in timbres, instru-
mental effects or melodic patterns, are
possible only in a few selected mo-
ments, determined by the probability
wave and provoked by 'catastrophes'
of the type described above (conflicts
between sieves, patterns, or patterns
and sieves).
In spite of these time discontinui-
ties, "Cuniculi"can be described as a
slowly evolving process. The regions of
the time domain covered by this piece
are characterized by well-defined,
easily identifiable and slowly changing
attributes. It would seem, then, that
skipping over lengthy periods of time
would result in a sectionalization of
the piece and in the creation of seg-
ments during which these attributes
remained almost constant. The con-
sistency is obtained by resorting to the
idea of sequence 'integrity' as dis-
cussed before. When one of these
breaks occurs, the continuity is in-
sured by the persistence of the pseudo-
random numbers sequence as well as
by the transfer in time of that se-
quence's 'history', as represented by
the last 20 to 50 sounds at each part,
which constantly influence the pres-
ent choice. The time traveler retains
his or her memory, and, at least up to
a point, events in the new time zone
are influenced by this past history, by
This content downloaded from 130.240.43.43 on Sun, 31 Jan 2016 12:20:23 UTC
events that have occurred earlier in
the piece in the experiential time.
When the transfer is directed to-
ward the future, it is easy to explain, in
psychological terms, how someone's
imagination is influenced by past ex-
periences. Yet when the move hap-
pens in the opposite sense, toward the
past, are we to understand that one
can modify the past at the prompting
of future events? An easy solution
would be to declare these incursions
toward origin just memories of a day-
dreaming person who conveniently
rearranges the past according to the
present.
Contemporary physics, once again
daring and imaginative, provides a
possible answer. The physicist John
Wheeler made the drawing illustrated
in Fig. 7, which reveals "that an ob-
server today can be made partially re-
sponsible for generating the reality of
the remote past. The tail of the figure
can thus represent the early stages of
the universe, being promoted to con-
crete reality through its later observa-
tion by consciousness which itself de-
pends on that reality" [24]. Wheeler's
thoughts are consistent with interpre-
tations of the mathematics on which
quantum mechanics is based, inter-
pretations challenging not only our
traditional understanding of time but
the very notions of causality and
reality.
With its elusive 'personality' tunnel-
ing through time, "Cuniculi"is trying
to follow suit.
References and Notes
1. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York:
Bantam, 1984).
2. Henri Pousseur, "La nuova sensibilita musi-
cale", IncontriMusicali,No. 2 (May 1958), quoted
in Umberto Eco, TheRoleof theReader(Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1979) p. 50.
3. Karlheinz Stockhausen, ". .. how time pas-
ses.. .", DieReihe3 (NewJersey: Universal Edition
Publishing, Inc., 1975) p. 32. (Original German
edition, Wien: Universal Edition A.G., 1957). This
periodical, edited by Herbert Eimert and K.
Stockhausen, is devoted to developments in con-
temporary music.
4. Eco [2]. Chapter 1 of this book is a revised ver-
sion of his Operaaperta-Forma e indeterminazione
nelle poetiche contemporanea(Milan: Bompiani,
1962).
5. Herbert Brfin, "From Musical Ideas to Com-
puters and Back", in The Computerand Music,
HarryLincoln, ed. (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University
Press, 1970); Lejaren A. Hiller and Leonard Isaac-
son, ExperimentalMusic (New York:McGraw-Hill,
1959); and Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971).
Tipei,The Computer: A Composer's Collaborator
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
6. Frank Dietrich, "The Computer: A Tool for
Thought-Experiments", Leonardo20, No. 4, 315-
325 (1987).
7. Lejaren A. Hiller, AlgorithmsI, II, and III, ver-
sions I-rV (1968); AlgorithmsI, versionI and IV, on
Deutsche Grammophon record # 2561 042; Algo-
rithmsIII, versionsIII and IV, premiered at the In-
ternational Computer Music Conference, hosted
by the School of Music of the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, 1987.
8. Gottfried Michael Koenig, UbungfiifurKlavier
(Darmstadt, West Germany: Tonos, 1969); and
Iannis Xenakis, the ST/-... group of pieces (Paris:
Edition Salabert, 1962-1964), especially ST/I0
(Angel record S-36656), ST/4, Morsima-amorsima
and Atrees(Angel S-36560) and ST/48 (no record
available).
9. Eco [2] p. 66, Note 9.
10. Richard Feynman, TheCharacterof thePhysical
Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965) p. 127.
11. Xenakis [5]; and Hiller [5].
12. Sever Tipei, "Maiden Voyages-A Score Pro-
duced with MP1", Computer MusicJournal 11, No.
2 (Summer 1987) pp. 49-58.
13. Sever Tipei, Undulating Michigamme, for
soloists and orchestra (New York:American Com-
posers Edition, American Composers Alliance,
1978). The actual length, succession and super-
position of sections and layers of music were de-
termined using MP1.
14. Sever Tipei, "Solving Specific Compositional
Problems with MP1", Proceedingsof the 1981 Inter-
national ComputerMusic Conference(Computer
Music Association, 1981) pp. 101-109.
15. Rene Thom, StructuralStabilityand Morpho-
genesis, Daniel Fowler, trans. (Menlo Park, CA:
Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Co., 1975).
16. Aurel Stroe, Cosmin Georgescu and Mario
Georgescu, "Morphogenetic Music", unpub-
lished translation of an article in Romanian
originally appearing in the magazine Muzica (Bu-
charest, Romania: Uniunea Compositorilor Ro-
mani, 1987).
17. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Manual of Zen Budd-
hism (New York: Grove Press, 1960). Quotation
from the "Diamond Sutra",p. 40.
18. Tipei [12].
19. B. S. DeWitt and N. Graham, eds., The Many
WorldsInterpretation
of QuantumMechanics(Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
20. Xenakis [5].
21. Sever Tipei, "Cuniculi", for five tubas (New
York: American Composers Edition, American
Composers Alliance, 1986). Also on a Centaur-
Consortium to Distribute Computer Music, Vol.
3, Computer Music from the University of Illinois
(CRC 2045, 1989).
22. Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New
York: New Directions Books, 1977) p. 795. See
also Sever Tipei, EzraPound'sCantoCXVI-A Com-
mentary,for baritone and piano (New York:Amer-
ican Composers Alliance, American Composers
Edition, 1980).
23. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order
Out Of Chaos (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
Prigogine reproduces Karl Popper's schematic
representation of Boltzmann's theory on page
255.
24. Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New
York: Simon and Schuster, Touchstone Books,
1983) p. 111 (Fig. 15).
195