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The Computer Music Center (CMC) at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the
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. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.


Location

The CMC is housed in Prentis Hall, 632 West 125th Street,
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, across the street from Columbia's 17-acre
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campus. The facility consists of a large graduate research facility specializing in computer music and multimedia research, as well as
composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography * Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...
and
recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for Sound recording and reproduction, recording and Audio mixing, mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home proje ...
s for student use. Projects to come out of the CMC since the 1990s include: * ArtBots *
dorkbot Dorkbot is a group of affiliated organizations worldwide that sponsor grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. The dorkbot motto is "peop ...
* PeRColate * Real-Time Cmix The director of the CMC is Seth Cluett, and the CMC offers classes taught by George E. Lewis, Seth Cluett, David Soldier, Anna Meadors, and Ben Holtzman, as well as visiting faculty who give seminars every year. In collaboration with the Visual Arts Program in the Columbia University School of the Arts, the Computer Music Center offers a Sound Art MFA Program directed by Miya Masaoka. The program was founded in 2014 by Douglas Repetto who served as Director until 2016.


History

The forerunner of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was a studio founded in the early 1950s by
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
professors
Vladimir Ussachevsky Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a Russian-American composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music. Biography Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in ...
and Otto Luening, and
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
professors
Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music. Biography ...
and
Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher, and writer on music. He had started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved towards complex harmonies and postromanticism, a ...
. Originally concerned with experiments in music
composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography * Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...
involving the new technology of reel-to-reel tape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. The center was officially established with a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...
in 1959 which was used to finance the acquisition of the
RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer (nicknamed ''Victor'') was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, wi ...
from its owner, RCA. The center's flagship piece of equipment, the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, was delivered in 1957 after it was developed to Ussachevsky and Babbitt's specifications. The RCA (and the center) were re-housed in Prentis Hall, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. Significant pieces of electronic music realized on the Synthesizer included Babbitt's ''Vision and Prayer'' and
Charles Wuorinen Charles Peter Wuorinen (, ; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, c ...
's '' Time's Encomium'', which was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 1964
Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...
released an album titled simply ''
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center The Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Location The CMC is h ...
'', which was produced principally on the RCA synthesizer. Most of the luminaries in the field of electronic music (and
avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
music in general) visited, worked, or studied at the Electronic Music Center, including
Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; h ...
,
Chou Wen-chung Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia Univ ...
, Halim El-Dabh, Michiko Toyama, Bülent Arel, Mario Davidovsky, Charles Dodge, Pril Smiley, Alice Shields,
Wendy Carlos Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos; November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer known for electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New Y ...
, Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Kenjiro Ezaki and
Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental music, experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia (Berio), Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Seque ...
. The center also acted as a
consulting A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...
agency for other electronic music studios in the
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, giving them advice on optimum studio design and helping them purchase equipment. The staff engineers at the center under Peter Mauzey developed customized equipment to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines,
quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic, also called quadrasonic or by the neologism quadio ortmanteau, formed by analogy with "stereo" sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are po ...
mixing consoles, and analog triggers designed to facilitate
interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...
between other (often custom-made) synthesizer equipment. The center also had a large collection of Buchla, Moog, and Serge Modular synthesizers. By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as its classical analog tape techniques were being surpassed by parallel work in the field of computer music. By the mid-1980s the Columbia and Princeton facilities had ceased their formal affiliation, with the Princeton music department strengthening its affiliation with
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
and founding a computer music studio under Godfrey Winham and
Paul Lansky Paul Lansky (born June 18, 1944, in New York City) is an American composer. Biography Paul Lansky (born 1944) is an American composer. He was educated at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, Queens College and Princeton University, studyi ...
(see Princeton Sound Lab). The original Columbia facility was re-organized in 1995 under the leadership of Brad Garton and was renamed the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Garton served as Director from 1995 until 2021, when Seth Cluett became Director joined by Anna Meadors as Assistant Director.


Associates

* Seth Cluett, Director, Lecturer in Computer Music and Sound Studies * Anna Meadors, Assistant Director * Brad Garton, Director Emeritus, Professor of Music * Miya Masaoka, Director of the Sound Arts MFA Program *
Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943) is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, Music cognition, cognition, Rhythm, rhythmic theory, and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff d ...
, Professor of Music *
Chou Wen-chung Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia Univ ...
, Professor of Music * George E. Lewis, Professor of Music * Zosha Di Castri, Assistant Professor of Music


References


"Q&A: electronic music comes of age"
(interview with director of research Douglas Repetto), by Daniel Cressey, ''
Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
'', Vol. 456, N° 7222, December 4, 2008, pg. 576; , ,


External links


Columbia history of the Electronic Music Center



The Computer Music Center, Columbia University

Princeton Sound Lab
*
Finding aid to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center records at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
{{Authority control Electronic music organizations Information technology organizations based in North America Experimental Music Studios Columbia University