Music 680: Special Topics in Music - Compositional Algorithms (Fall 2007)
Mondays 4:30 - 7:10 pm, Music B40
Christopher Burns (cburns at uwm dot edu)
office hours: Wednesday, 2-4 pm, Music 367 or by appointment
Course description: Aesthetics, analysis, technique, and
composition of musical works embodying algorithims, with an emphasis on
the close study of pioneering works from the 1950s to the present.
Practical programming for algorithmic composition using Lisp and the
Common Music environment. Students will complete short composition /
programming assignments and a final creative project.
Prerequisites: Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students
in the Music Department and the DIVAS program; others admitted by consent
of the instructor. Prior experience with programming is not required.
Qualities that will be essential for the course include curiosity,
diligence, creativity, and aesthetic open-mindedness. Please let the
instructor know as soon as possible if you need any special
accommodations.
Learning goals and measurement:
Upon successful completion of this course, students should:
1. be familiar with the course's repertoire of algorithmic music from 1950 to the present;
2. be able to discuss the technical application and aesthetic purpose of the algorithms in these works;
3. be able to recreate these algorithmic techniques using the Lisp/Common Music environment;
4. be able to realize specific compositional ideas of their own in Lisp/Common Music.
Student attainment of these objectives will be measured through participation in classroom discussion, programming and creative assignments, and a final creative project.
Course requirements:
1. Please attend all classes and arrive on time. If you need to miss a
class for any reason, please let the instructor know in advance. Students
who miss two or more classes will receive reduced grades (one reduction
for each absence, beginning with the second). Special events listed on the
syllabus are also included in this attendance requirement (though other
instructor-approved contemporary music concerts can be subsituted if
absolutely necessary). Please be sure to find the instructor at each event
and make sure your presence is counted.
2. Please prepare for class by completing all reading and
listening/score reading assignments. Remember that listening is an active
process; if you are multitasking you are unlikely to get much out of the
experience. The best way to complete a listening assignment is to listen
in the Music Library while simultaneously reading the score. With short
works, you are strongly encouraged to listen to the work multiple times.
You may also wish to take notes on your listening - what are you hearing?
How do you make sense of it? How does it change over time (what is the
form of the work?) Please arrive for class ready to participate in the
discussion; this will count for 15% of your final grade.
3. Please complete all programming assignments in a timely fashion.
These assignments constitute 40% of the final grade. Assignments are due
on time; late submissions will receive reduced grades (10% reduction per
day). If you are having difficulty completing an assignment please
contact the instructor as soon as possible, and before the due date.
4. Students should be prepared to propose a project which addresses a
specific creative issue involving algorithmic composition, to compose a
work addressing that challenge, and to present their work as part of the
Electro-Acoustic Salon on Thursday, December 20, at 7:30 pm. The final
project is worth 45% of the final grade.
Course materials:
Listening and reading assignments for the course are available online from the UWM Library electronic reserves; scores are on reserve in the Music Library.
UWM Uniform Syllabus Policies: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SecU/SyllabusLinks.pdf
Common Music website: http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net
Aquamacs website: http://aquamacs.org
- Course schedule:
- September 10: course introduction
- topics & activities:
- historical overview of algorithmic composition: isorhythm, canon, variation, etc.
- introduction to Common Music
- assignment 1 (due September 17):
- develop a Common Music function with a musical application
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- September 17: integral serialism - Boulez & Stockhausen
- topics & activities:
- context and precedents for integral serialism
- Ligeti's analysis of Structures 1a
- serial technique and its implementation in Common Music
- listening/score reading:
- Karlheinz Stockhausen Kreuzspiel
- Pierre Boulez Le Marteau sans maitre
- reading:
- Robert Morgan, "Analytical Comments [Kreuzspiel]," Anthology of Twentieth-Century Music, pp. 381-385
- Pierre Boulez, "Schoenberg is Dead," Notes of an Apprenticeship, pp. 268-276
- György Ligeti, "Decision and Automatism in Structures 1a," Die Reihe 4, trans. by Leo Black (Pennsylvania: Theodore Pressesr), 1960: 36-62.
- assignment 2 (due September 24):
- compose a CM etude deriving all musical parameters from a single series of numbers
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- September 20: Unruly Music - Chris Froh, guest artist, 7:30 pm, Recital Hall
- September 24: indeterminacy - Cage
- topics & activities:
- aesthetics of and strategies for indeterminacy
- Cage's relationship with Boulez and Stockhausen
- stochastic techniques in Common Music
- listening/score reading:
- John Cage Music of Changes Book III
- John Cage Williams Mix
- reading:
- James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, chapter 3, pp. 74-104
- Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed., The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, letters 26-43, pp. 80-144
- assignment 3 (due October 8):
- compose a CM etude which is pervasively indeterminate, but possesses "individual personality"
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- October 1: canon I - Nancarrow
- topics & activities:
- isorhythm and canon in the player-piano studies
- novel canonic forms: tempo canon, sound-mass constructions
- canonic structure: convergence points
- listening/score reading:
- Conlon Nancarrow Studies for Player Piano selections: #21; #37; #41a, 41b, 41c
- reading:
- Kyle Gann, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow, chapters 5-8, pp. 85-239
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- October 8: stochastics - Xenakis & Tenney
- topics & activities:
- Xenakis' critique of serialism
- indeterminacy (Cage) vs. stochastics (Xenakis)
- stochastic techniques and Formalized Music
- Tenney, Bell Labs, and stochasticism in computer music
- listening/score reading:
- Iannis Xenakis ST/4
- James Tenney Phases
- reading:
- Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music, chapters 1, 5, pp. 1-42, 131-154
- Larry Polansky, "Computer Music," excerpt from "The Early Works of James Tenney," in Soundings 13 (1984), pp. 151-171.
- assignment 4 (due October 22):
- compose a CM etude balancing randomness and control ("chaos" and "order")
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- October 15: [no class meeting]
- October 22: canon II - Ligeti & Holliger
- topics & activities:
- Ligeti's critique of serialism
- changing approaches to micropolyphony and canon
- comparative sound-mass constructions: Nancarrow, Ligeti, and Holliger
- listening/score reading:
- György Ligeti Atmospheres
- György Ligeti Lontano
- Heinz Holliger Scardanelli-Zyklus selections: Sommer III, Winter I, Frühling I [no scores]
- reading:
- György Ligeti, "Metamorphoses of Musical Form" [excerpt], in Source Readings in Music History, Leo Treitler, ed., pp. 1376-1384.
- assignment 5 (due November 5):
- compose a canonic CM etude
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code, interaction transcript
- October 25: Unruly Music - Roger Admiral, guest artist, 7:30 pm,
Recital Hall
- October 29: collaborative realization - Cage, Cardew, Sharp & Freeman
- topics & activities:
- composition, improvisation, collaborative realization, and metamusic
- listening/score reading:
- John Cage Variations II [score only]
- Cornelius Cardew Autumn '60 [score only]
- Elliott Sharp Digital [score at http://www.repple.se/datacide/download.html]
- Jason Freeman Graph Theory [http://turbulence.org/Works/graphtheory/]
- reading:
- James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, chapter 4, pp. 105-137
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code
- November 5: minimalism - Aperghis, Johnson, La Barbara, Oliveros
- topics & activities:
- algorithm and (ir)rationality
- constructive vs. perceptual complexity
- contexts for minimalism
- listening/score reading:
- George Aperghis Recitations nos. 1, 12, 13, and 14
- Tom Johnson Rational Melodies
- Joan La Barbara Klee Alee
- Pauline Oliveros Bye Bye Butterfly
- reading:
- Rosalind Krauss, "LeWitt In Progress," The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, pp. 244-259.
- Alvin Lucier, "Origins of a Form," Leonardo Music Journal vol 8, pp. 5-11.
- assignment 6 (due November 19):
- compose a CM etude addressing the relationship between "simplicity"
and "complexity"
- class notes
- code resources: lisp code
- November 8: Unruly Music - EAMC 25th Anniversary Celebration, 7:30
pm, Recital Hall
- November 12: complexity - Ferneyhough & Dillon
- topics:
- "the new complexity": context, aesthetics, and analysis
- collaborating with Ferneyhough: LISP and Patchwork code for Shadowtime
- listening/score reading:
- Brian Ferneyhough Terrain
- Brian Ferneyhough Lemma-Icon-Epigram [no score]
- James Dillon East 11th Street NY 10003
- reading:
- Brian Ferneyhough, "Duration and Rhythm as Compositional Resources" and "Responses to a Questionnaire on 'Complexity'," Collected Writings, pp. 51-71.
- Richard Toop, "Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram," Perspectives of New Music vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 53-100.
- code resources: lisp code
- class notes
- November 19: computer music - Xenakis, Chafe, Scaletti & Burtner
- topics & activities:
- algorithms and style replication
- algorithms as radical extensions of existing techniques
- listening/score reading:
- Matthew Burtner Glass Phase [no score]
- Chris Chafe Transect [no score]
- Carla Scaletti sunSurgeAutomata [no score]
- Iannis Xenakis S.709 [no score]
- reading:
- David Cope, The Algorithmic Composer, chapters 6-7, pp. 205-266
- Bill Schottstaedt, Automatic Species Counterpoint, STAN-M-19
- assignment 7 (due November 26):
- write a one-page proposal for your final project (to be presented December 20)
- code resources: lisp code
- class notes
- November 26: networking - The Hub
- topics & activities:
- network rules as algorithmic composition
- algorithms in an improvisational context
- listening/score reading:
- Tim Perkis Waxlips [no score]
- Phil Stone Borrowing and Stealing [no score]
- Mark Trayle Simple Degradation [no score]
- Mark Trayle Crybaby [no score]
- reading:
- Chris Brown and John Bischoff, "Indigenous to the Net: Early Network Music Bands in the San Francisco Bay Area," http://crossfade.walkerart.org/brownbischoff/
- Scot Gresham-Lancaster, "The Aesthetics and History of the Hub: The Effects of Changing Technology on Network Computer Music," Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998), pp. 39-44.
- code resources: lisp code
- December 3: later Ligeti
- topics & activities:
- algorithmic specification and compositional intervention in the piano etudes
- listening/score reading:
- György Ligeti Etudes for Piano Book I
- reading:
- Hartmuth Kinzler, "György Ligeti: Decision and automatism in Desordre," Interface 20/2 (1999), pp. 89-124.
- class notes
- December 10: later Cage
- topics & activities:
- Cage's time-bracket works, and algorithmic work in other media (mesostics, opera, film, etc.)
- listening:
- John Cage Fourteen
- reading:
- "Cage and the Computer: a Panel Discussion," in David Bernstein and Christopher Hatch, eds., Writing Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art, pp. 190-209
- code resources: lisp code
- class notes
- December 20: Electroacoustic Salon 23, 7:30 pm, Music B60 - final project presentations