{"id":2385,"date":"2011-04-22T01:27:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T23:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/?p=2385"},"modified":"2025-08-22T18:15:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:15:01","slug":"rip-max-mathews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/2385","title":{"rendered":"RIP Max Mathews"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"maxhead\"<\/a>Pessima giornata il 21 Aprile. All’et\u00e0 di 84 anni si \u00e8 spento Max Mathews<\/a>. Non un vero compositore, ma praticamente l’inventore della computer music, avendo ideato e scritto, nel 1957, il primo software che permettesse ad un elaboratore di emettere suoni.<\/p>\n

Per raccontarlo con le sue parole:<\/p>\n

Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V. A host of others wrote Music 10, Music 360, Music 15, Csound and Cmix. Many exciting pieces are now performed digitally. The IBM 704 and its siblings were strictly studio machines – they were far too slow to synthesize music in real-time. Chowning’s FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive, digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it affordable.<\/p>\n

Starting with the Groove program in 1970, my interests have focused on live performance and what a computer can do to aid a performer. I made a controller, the radio-baton, plus a program, the conductor program, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores. In addition to contemporary composers, these proved attractive to soloists as a way of playing orchestral accompaniments. Singers often prefer to play their own accompaniments. Recently I have added improvisational options which make it easy to write compositional algorithms. These can involve precomposed sequences, random functions, and live performance gestures. The algorithms are written in the C language. We have taught a course in this area to Stanford undergraduates for two years. To our happy surprise, the students liked learning and using C. Primarily I believe it gives them a feeling of complete power to command the computer to do anything it is capable of doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eccolo in un video del 2007 mentre ascolta Daisy Bell (A Bycicle Build for Two)<\/em>, eseguita e cantata nel 1961 da un elaboratore IBM 7094 grazie al software di John Kelly, Carol Lockbaum e dello stesso Mathews.<\/p>\n