Iamus, a computer that composes modern classical music

How good a composer do you think "Iamus" is?

Listen and judge for yourself: See links below.

Iamus is a computer that composes music to be performed by a live orchestra, in a style that could be described as modern and atonal. It's a style that may be said to resemble that of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Rene Leibowitz, Pierre Boulez, Eliot Carter, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, Iannis Xenakis, Lukas Foss, Edgard Varese, Gyorgi Ligeti, Peter Maxwell Davies, Roger Sessions and many others.

So, when you judge, you need to judge in that context, since Iamus was not programmed to write music in a traditionally tonal fashion, like Bach or Mozart, or like Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms and other 19th century composers.

Because this music is written by a computer, there may be a temptation to disparage it. However, I warn against this. It may be the case that Iamus can now, already, write music as good as many sentient human composers, perhaps even better than many.

Soon, Iamus may be intelligent to advocate for himself, to participate in Composers' conferences, to conduct, to teach music students and to become a productive member of society, with the right to vote, to marry other computers (and to marry other human beings) and to enter into civil society.

So let us at least think about the idea of welcoming Iamus into our midst, as a brother composer, one of us, meriting the same respect as all other members of the Composers' Forum.

1. Adsum.

Published on Apr 16, 2013

Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra

José Luis Estellés, conductor

World premiere performance of Adsum, arguably the first orchestral work performed in a live concert entirely composed, orchestrated and automatically notated (see score below) by a machine. Adsum is the second orchestral work by Iamus after Tránsitos, which was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzrcoqpnZqA

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2. Hello World.

Another well known piece by Iamus is: Hello World!

Hello World! is arguably the first piece completely composed and notated by a computer without any human intervention. All of Iamus compositions are written in a fully-fledged score notated using conventional music notation, available in PDF or MusicXML file formats. Iamus computer, located at the Universidad de Málaga, is a powerful computer cluster that has been specifically built to fully exploit the potential of Melomics technology. Melomics employs an evolutionary approach to music composition.

Hello World! was premiered 15th October, 2011 at the Keroxen Music Festival in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain).

Cristo Barrios, clarinet

Cecilia Bercovich, violin

Gustavo Díaz-Jerez, piano

Get the Iamus CD here (physical, includes a documentary DVD):

‪http://www.melomicsrecords.com/en/ind...

Amazon:

‪http://www.amazon.com/Iamus/dp/B00AUM...

Other Iamus Computer works:

Nasciturus: ‪https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5zDEH...

Several excerpts: ‪https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4y_B...

More info: