A composer can encode their own decision-making as an algorithm, automating it to free attention for intuitive aspects

Laurie Spiegel articulates a core motivation for algorithmic composition: the composer can analyze and formalize their own musical decision-making process — what they would do in various situations — and encode this as an algorithm. The algorithm then executes those describable decisions automatically, freeing the composer’s attention for the aspects of musical judgment that remain ineffable and cannot be formalized. This recursive self-modelling turns composition into meta-composition: designing the system that composes.

Examples

Spiegel encoded her preferences for melodic variation, harmonic movement, and structural contrast as rules, then let the computer generate music from those rules while she listened and steered at a higher level.

Assessment

Name two aspects of your own musical taste that you could plausibly formalize as algorithmic rules, and one aspect that you think could not be formalized. Explain why the third resists formalization.