Library Concept
Algorithmic Music
Composing via algorithms or formal rule systems, from computer-generated scores to live coding.
Algorithmic music uses algorithms or formal sets of rules to generate musical material, whether fully automated or as an interactive tool for a composer — a lineage that stretches from centuries-old voice-leading rules in Western counterpoint through Lejaren Hiller’s Illiac Suite (1957), generally considered the first score composed by computer, to Gottfried Michael Koenig’s aleatoric composition programs of the 1960s. Later approaches drew on stochastic processes and Markov chains, formal grammars, genetic algorithms, and fractal or L-system-generated material.