source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 06:05:24 -0700 Subject: Pieces of TUNING digest 805 From: Steve Curtin >The copy that arrived here truncated with Eric's initial posting. >This means that we all missed another exciting Brian rant. Actually, >we also missed Steve Curtin's comments on what's meant by "experimental" >music - which is what I was interested in. Anyone know what went wrong? Actually it was more of a historical perspective- here it is again. My apologies if it's a repeat for some people. I studied composition and computer music at Illinois from 1984-1986. >Exactly what is an experimental composer? >Which hypothesis does the experimental composer >conduct an experiment to test? What is the >experimental control? One composer who described his work as "experimental" and who may have been one of the first to think of his music as such is Lejaren Hiller, author of the "Illiac Suite" and later "HPSCHD", a collaboration with John Cage that featured many different superimposed N tones per octave tunings. To this day the studios at the University of Illnois Champaign-Urbana are referred to as the "Experimental Music Studios". Hiller's background was in Chemistry, and for a time he had a joint appointment there in Chemistry and Music. For Hiller his experiment was if he could compose a piece of music using the computer. Aesthetic issues about whether the music was appreciated by the audience were sometimes considered to be outside the bounds of the experiment. regards, Steve Curtin Ensoniq Corp Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 18:18 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA14534; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 18:18:38 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14561 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA05692; Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:18:36 -0700 Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:18:36 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu