Real-time generated music on the Web

My general intention of opposing finalised works with open processes finds its effective realisation in a radical method: the musical work no longer exists as an interpretable and reproducible code (be it as printed score or recorded sound), but uniquely and alone as software. In the moment of performance, this generates a respectively new variant of the “meta model” in real time. The generation process can either run automatically and autonomously, or be steered by changing the system parameters. By using suitable control devices (interfaces), the computer program finally becomes an instrument. This process can also be transferred to the Internet, where instead of the simple replaying of conserved sound files, real-time generated forms of music appear.

An excellent example of this is the never-ending Lexikon-Sonate (1992 ff.) for computer-controlled piano to which you can also listen on the attached CD:

This work-in-progress had its origin as a musical commentary on Andreas Okopenko’s Lexikon-Roman (1970) – one of the first literary hypertexts. It exists only as a computer program, which composes piano music in real time and plays it without technical playing limitations on an acoustic piano or a synthesiser. Each performance of the piece is unique and cannot be repeated.

The programme is available on the Net as freeware for Macintosh. It lives an autonomous existence on innumerable hard disks and ftp servers fully withdrawn from the control of its author and is also used by other composers as a generator for musical structures. Alongside this there are also special web versions which have been optimised for HTML browsers and make it possible to intervene interactively in the music generation process: