Computer Music

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Computer music is music created by or with the aid of a computer.

History of Computer Music

1956: Illiad Suite, arguably the first computer-aided musical composition, by Lejaren A. Hiller and Leonard M. Isaacson, then of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, premiers.
1957: Max Mathews (then of Bell Labs) writes MUSIC, a program for creating sound (including musical sound) with a computer.
1958: The Experimental Music Studios of UIUC are founded by Lejaren A. Hiller.
1958: The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center is founded by Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990) and Otto Luening (1900-1996) with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
1964: Jean-Claude Risset arrives at Bell Labs and creates world's first computer-generated trumpet sound.
1972: UCSD Center for Music Experiment is founded, with Roger Reynolds as founding director.
1975: CCRMA (Stanford University) is founded by John Chowning and Leland Smith.
1977: IRCAM (Paris) opens, with Pierre Boulez at the helm, and Luciano Berio, Vinko Globokar, Jean-Claude Risset, and Max Mathews included as administrators.
1979: F. Richard Moore joins Music Faculty of UCSD, founding the Computer Audio Research Laboratory (CARL).
1980s: Columbia and Princeton dissociate regarding the Electronic Music Center.
1984: MIT Media Lab is founded by Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President Jerome Wiesner. Barry Vercoe and Tod Machover are founding members.
1984: The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) is founded.
1987: CNMAT (Berkeley, CA) is founded by Richard Felciano.