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From: ee163acp@sdcc13.UUCP (DARIN JOHNSON)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.ai
Subject: Re: Hofstadter on computer music
Message-ID: <234@sdcc13.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-May-85 13:51:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcc13.234
Posted: Wed May  8 13:51:35 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 11-May-85 00:40:49 EDT
References: <582@tpvax.fluke.UUCP> <195@u1100s.UUCP> <14174@watmath.UUCP> <711@gloria.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 55
Xref: watmath net.books:1794 net.ai:2738

In article <711@gloria.UUCP>, colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) writes:
> [Do not remove this tag under penalty of law]
> 
> > "To think -- and I have heard this suggested -- that we might soon be
> > able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar
> > desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile circuitry pieces
> > which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a
> > grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit.
> > A ``program'' which could produce music as they did would have to wander
> > around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life
> > and feeling every moment of it.  It would have to understand the joy and
> > loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the
> &c. &c. &c.
> 
> Hofstadter is merely taking a stand. "Sterile circuitry," "depth of the
> human spirit," and so on, are empty rhetoric.  Dr. Geoffrey Jefferson
> wrote something similar in 1949:
> 
> 	"Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a
> 	concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not
> 	by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that
> 	machine equals brain ... " [_British Med. J.,_ 25 June 1949;
> 					quoted with disapproval in
> 					Turing's "Computing Machinery
> 					and Intelligence."]
> 
> While Jefferson's article suffers from a few misconceptions about
> computers, it is philosophically superior to Turing's.  Unfortunately,
> philosophers who write about computer-generated music seldom under-
> stand the nature of music.
> -- 
> Col. G. L. Sicherman
> ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel

Ok, as a Computer Engineering major, with a minor in Music, I can safely
assume that some type of (perhaps enjoyable) music may one day be created
by computer.  However, I seriously doubt that any great piece of music
would emerge.  It would be a simple academic matter to analyze any piece
of music thus generated (in the program notes:  .. bar 35 demonstrates
the unlikely occurence of particular element leading the composer to
choose this particular passage... )  One would no longer need to argue
and debate as to what is really happening in the process of music
making, just generate the same set of input and random numbers, and you
can see exactly what happened and why.  To me this is what is refered to
as sterile.  Admittedly, Beethoven tended to rewrite pieces over and
over until they were "finished", perhaps ending up with the same as he
would if he used another 'set of input'.  If any great piece of music
were to come out of computers, I would hope the program was highly
interactive, taking out the great percentage of the drudgery accompaning
this creative process.  In any event, I would predict that perhaps a
future assignment in some university music class would be to tell the
difference between a 'human' piece and a computer generated one.  I
would hope the entire class could get this one right.

Darin Johnson