What is a composer?

Seems to me mainly to be a worry for video-game and film composers.

In terms of going to a concert to hear music which is a product of the times etc., which is what many do when they go to hear a concert of new art music, who wants to go and hear something with no thought behind it - it's like reading books on what it means to be human, written by a robot... it's not really a threat.

That's just my opinion. Of course if computers do compose fabulous art music, I'm sure it will be heard in concerts as curiosities, at least for a while, but composing is about being human, so it will always be next to meaningless when coming from a computer.

I should have specified, yeah. The threat is mostly to those of use who actually make a living making music ;)

I'm kidding, of course. I don't even make a living.

But the point is that Daniel is very correct; the threat mostly applies to composers of incidental music. :w00t:

here's some more food for thought.. The Mozart Code - July 25, 2006 - The New York Sun

"In the most basic terms, "Enlightenment" is an algorithm that allows 10 computers, working by trial and error, to reconstruct the composition of the 30-second coda to Mozart's Jupiter symphony, starting from scratch. Each of the 10 computers respresents one section of the orchestra. It's like waiting for monkeys to type Hamlet — only they're specially trained monkeys that go back every time they make a mistake."

"What "Enlightenment" is not, the artists repeatedly emphasized, is an effort to imagine Mozart's own composition process.Instead, it's the solution to a problem of the designers' own invention.And it is not a criticism to say that instead of bringing us closer to Mozart,"Enlightenment" reflects the distance between the art of his time and that of today.The multimedia artwork is intended to heighten our appreciation of Mozart's genius. Aficionados may enjoy recognizing the fragments of Mozart's themes, like individual strands of musical DNA, as they gradually cohere and order themselves. Casual passers-by may enjoy "Enlightenment's" patterns, which are as mysterious and bewitching as those produced by many forms of modern technology."

"Enlightenment" runs with two kinds of input: the score of the symphony's entire Fourth movement and an actual orchestral performance (recorded on audiotape and video) of the coda. It analyzes the input according to repeated patterns, relationships between adjacent pitches, and the ways in which pitches combine into chords. As the program attempts to reconstruct the composition, it checks each note and theme against the score.

In 35 minutes, the work passes through four stages. First, the program tests various notes, keeping the ones that Mozart used and throwing out the others. In the second, it identifies the musical themes. In the third, it attempts to put those themes in order, starting over each time it makes a mistake. In the last stage, having successfully reconstructed the coda, the program plays it.

In the process, the computers' search for notes and themes produces visual images that appear on screen.These images are not traditional musical notation, but abstract lines and shapes.When one of the computers successfully derives a theme, a pattern of arcs that is abstracted from the video of the musicians playing, flashes briefly. The sights and sounds are different every time the program runs.The result is, both visually and aurally, a work that is contemporary and abstract — more John Cage than Mozart.

"From a strictly musical composition standpoint, it's an utterly modern piece," Mr. Downie said. "Or maybe even slightly early 20th-century."

This directly relates to one of our arguments.. can a computer somehow create something unique, original, or expressive.. (a computer is in many ways a reflection of the creator.. computers may be more human than we think)

Although they've vowed never to do a single piece of this technological complexity again — their next commission involves tracing the patterns of children in a playground — the artists agreed that the process had been deeply satisfying.They had no idea what the images would be when they started; instead, they watched them emerge from the program they wrote.

"That makes it continually rewarding and humbling," Mr. Downie said. "You make an image, but you don't feel like you made it, quite. You sort of discovered it."

here it is! the strangest mozart ull ever hear (or see) The OpenEnded Group - Enlightenment / 2006

heres how it works The OpenEnded Group - Music analysis

click working score for illustration

The OpenEnded Group - Scale + method

Didn't many composers during the 20th century often have a second job, so that they could manage financially?

Richard Strauss, who is IMO the greatest musical genius who is known of today, and one of the greatest geniuses period, had a downright boring life - and was wealthy due to his job as a conductor.

(This is the "Star Wars"-like Strauss, not the waltz ones).

As for the computers, I have no doubt computers can produce excellent and extremely complicated music....

But the real fun of music is that your perspective of the universe comes through in it. The computer is not a self-concious being that conciously experiences the universe (despite that I believe molecules of inanimate objects have a life force, but that is irrelevant here).

Also, the computer is most likely ignorant of the collective unconcious. Although I could say there is no real attachment between emotion, or another physical thing, and harmony that allegedly represents it, we seem to identify certain harmonies as certain things. For example, take the diminished with a perfect fifth. The theme of the wolf in Peter and the Wolf is basically this (I believe) ; the theme of the Emperor in Star Wars is a melody constructed out of this. In this case they are both perceived as "evil" - though whether they are evil is dependent on your axis of evil, they ARE similar mechanically (musically speaking) and functionally in terms of the universe.

Edit: I forgot to mention music like Strauss'/Liszt tone poems, that use Wagnerian leitmotifs - I'm not sure a computer would be able to say "I need to musically show an old man dying in a bed....then I need to show him reliving the rest of his life...", and act accordingly.

(despite that I believe molecules of inanimate objects have a life force, but that is irrelevant here).

Also, the computer is most likely ignorant of the collective unconcious. Although I could say there is no real attachment between emotion, or another physical thing, and harmony that allegedly represents it, we seem to identify certain harmonies as certain things. I forgot to mention music like Strauss'/Liszt tone poems, that use Wagnerian leitmotifs - I'm not sure a computer would be able to say "I need to musically show an old man dying in a bed....then I need to show him reliving the rest of his life...", and act accordingly.

I understand where your going here, but scientists are still trying to figure out exactly what the collective unconcious is. The limited knowledge I know of it right now is that its all about billions of connections between neurons in the brain. Whose to say that a computer could not be modeled after the human brain. Or somehow replicate certain functions.

What I'm trying to say here is that maybe humans aren't as special or valuable as we consider ourselves. Yes, it is amazing the things that humans are capable of, but I do believe that we can use technology to replicate certain aspects of humans in the future.

I know the idea of having a computer able to compose does seem somewhat frightening but at the same time I find it fascinating. If we are able to create machines that can replicate certain human functions, we will be able to learn so much more about ourselves and how our own systems work.

People have always been afraid of new technologies.. Fear Factor at The Thinking Stick (I will try and find a better example but this is the best I could come up with at the moment.)

Frankenstien is a good example of this fear. Although it is a fiction piece, I do belive that works such as these greatly affect our view of how far scientists should go. Just because Victor Frankenstien made a "monster" on the outside, some may say frankenstien was very human (after all, when he first encountered the world, he was a curious innocent being. he only became a monster because people viewed him that way.) on the inside, But people like to stick with the popular belief that if we create something thats out of the ordinary its going to come back and bite us in the donkey. I don't believe that at all. The terminator is another Popular example of this fear. Of course that was about scientists who made killing machines. I think the biggest fear of this is of losing our independence and our control. I believe new technology brings about exactly the opposite, giving us more independence and more control. Because we have so many more options. Technology only increases our capabilities, although it can certainly be abused, (nuclear weapons) and fear of this is very real.