Leland Clayton Smith (August 6, 1925 – December 17, 2013) was an American musician, teacher and computer scientist. He taught at Stanford University for 34 years, and developed the

music engraving Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term ''music copying'' is almost equivalent—though ''music engraving'' implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually ...

tool SCORE.

Career

Smith was born in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, United States. Showing an early interest in music, after four years of initial study with local teachers he took private lessons in counterpoint, orchestration and composition with

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

, who lived near the Smith family. Smith continued studying with Milhaud for two years till he was old enough to join the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

in 1943. On leaving the Navy in 1946, he studied for a baccalaureate and master's degree in composition under

Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and then went to Paris to study under Olivier Messiaen at the

Paris Conservatoire The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

in 1948-9. Returning to America, he worked predominantly as a bassoonist in New York, but also took occasional work with the

San Francisco Opera San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when h ...

Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...

. He also assisted Milhaud as a teaching assistant at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

from 1951-2. Accepting a teaching position at

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1952, Smith taught there till 1958 when he moved to a teaching and research position at Stanford University. After six years of teaching harmonic analysis and composition at Stanford, Smith won a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a year in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. Returning to Stanford in 1965, Smith joined in the work done by

John Chowning John M. Chowning (; born August 22, 1934 in Salem, New Jersey) is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acou ...

Max Mathews Max Vernon Mathews (November 13, 1926 in Columbus, Nebraska, USA – April 21, 2011 in San Francisco, CA, USA) was a pioneer of computer music. Biography Mathews studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Ma ...

, John Pierce and David Poole on computer synthesized music. In 1966, Smith developed an input syntax for MUSIC V that he called SCORE to enable music to be entered more accurately and efficiently into the new system that the team were developing. This was developed into the independent program he called MSS which was the first computer music typesetting program, and which was further developed into the SCORE program. Smith and Chowning, along with John Grey,

Loren Rush Loren is a given name, nickname and surname which may refer to: Given name Men * Loren Acton (born 1936), American physicist and astronaut * Loren C. Ball (born 1948), amateur astronomer who has discovered more than 100 asteroids * Loren M. Ber ...

and Andy Moorer, subsequently founded the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (

CCRMA Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

). Smith composed for most of his life. Reviewing Smith's Woodwind Trio in 1974, Richard Swift commented how '...the long arching lines of the Trio, the sensitive and refined shaping of short movements, the twentieth-century Franco-American sonorities of the instruments make a fitting act of homage to Milhaud, but the voice is always Smith's own...'. Reviewing the two motets in 1976, Swift commented that Smith's music 'commands attention by virtue of its imaginative and expressive power and intelligent craft.' Retiring from Stanford in 1992, Smith continued to develop SCORE and was an enthusiastic supporter of the local donkey sanctuary, until his death in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, on December 17, 2013.

Notable publications

* * * Notable as the first music book typeset entirely by computer.

Compositions

* ''Introduction and divertimento for five instruments'', 1949 * ''String trio'', 1953 * ''Four etudes for piano'', 1966 * ''Six bagatelles for piano'', 1971 * ''Two motets for mixed chorus'', 1972 * ''Trio for woodwinds'', 1973 * ''Intermezzo and Capriccio for piano'', 1976 * ''Two duets for clarinet and bassoon'', 1977 * ''Suite for trio'', 1977 * ''Sonata for trumpet and piano'', 1980 * ''Twelve etudes for trumpet'', 1980 * ''Wind quintet'', 1981 * ''Three pacifist songs for soprano and piano'', 1982 * ''Sonatina and concert piece for violin and piano'', 1982 * ''Suite for solo viola'', 1982 * ''Sonata for viola and piano'', 1982 * ''Piano sonata'', 1984 * ''Symphony for small orchestra'', 1985

References

External links

*
Links to archival documents related to Smith
' at

*
Video interview with Leland Smith
' at

NAMM The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

*
Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution
' at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Leland 1925 births 2013 deaths American classical bassoonists American computer scientists University of California, Berkeley alumni American expatriates in France American music educators 20th-century classical musicians