Item #C06229 Experimental Music - Composition with an Electronic Computer. Lejaren Hiller, Leonard Isaacson.

Experimental Music - Composition with an Electronic Computer.

McGraw-Hill Book Co, NY 1959, first edition; vi, 197 pages, musical notation illustrations at rear.

Condition: Very Good or a bit better, blue cloth hardcover in a Good+ dustjacket, jacket edgeworn with fingernail-sized chip missing from heel of jacket & rather larger thumbsized piece missing from top jacket edge; prev owner's ink signature on endpaper. Binding is tight, pages clean and unmarked.

Keywords: experimental music, electronic music, computer music, ILLIAC, history of computer music

Price: $150.00

Item Description

'The first book on computer-generated music...' 'The first book on algorithmic composition by the first man to compose music on a computer...' (OOC 659).

CONTENTS -- Nature of the Problem - introduction; chronology; presentation of the material; The Aesthetic Problem - meaning & form in music; the Logic of Musical composition; Information Theory; Information theory & music; Experimental Music - defined; Electronic or synthetic music; Programmed Music;

Other experiments to generate computer music; The Technical Problem - non-numerical uses of computers; operation of automatic high-speed digital computers; the 'man-versus 'machine' problem; the Monte Carlo method; the Monte carlo method & the generation of music;

Experimental Details - outline of experiments; experiment one, two, three and four; Experimental Results - the Illiac Suite - Introduction; Experiment One; two; three; four; Some Future Musical Applications - introduction Applications to Music Analysis; applications to music composition; Summary of Results; Appendix - the full score of the ILLIAC SUITE.