Many of the 24 essays in this book appeared earlier in such publications as the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, The Computer Journal, Journal of Music Theory, IEEE Transactions on Computers, and Sonological Reports (Utrecht). The essays span the years 1958 to 1993. The book will appeal to music theorists, music historians, composers, and computer scientists.
Computer scientists should not assume that their lack of music theory background will preclude understanding the contents of the essays, nor should musicians with no background in computing assume that the material will be incomprehensible to them. Either group might begin with the essay by Marvin Minsky, “Music, Mind, and Meaning,” which contains interesting philosophical and speculative observations. The opening paragraphs of John Rothgeb’s “Simulating Motor Skills by Digital Computer” give a well-phrased explanation as to why “music was predictably the art form most directly accessible to computational study.”
The essays are grouped into seven categories:
Foundations: Generate-and-test Composition
Foundations: Composition Parsing
AI and Music: Heuristic Composition
AI and Music: Generative Grammars
AI and Music: Alternative Theories
AI and Music: Composition Tools
AI and Music: New Directions
Each essay is preceded by a short summary and commentary by the editors. These helpful comments are often sufficient to let the reader determine whether she or he wishes to pursue the detailed arguments in a particular essay. The illustrative materials throughout the book--musical examples, charts, and quotations from programs--are all clearly presented. The editors’ introduction to the book begins with the famous quotation by Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, in which she, writing in 1843, predicts that Charles Babbage’s recently invented analytical engine “might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” This well-edited survey is one more document of the enormous amount of effort expended in the past 40 or more years to achieve the goal predicted by Countess Lovelace, as well as evidence that there is still a long way to go before reaching that goal.
