Virtual composer makes beautiful music—and stirs controversy
When most of us think about a machine composing musical pieces, we think of primitive songs coming out of a HAL 9000 that could be suitable for a child's toy, but nothing that music lovers would actually enjoy. That's because most of us haven't heard of Emily Howell. No, that's not a person—it's the name of a computer program written by University of California, Santa Cruz professor David Cope that, after nearly three decades of work, is about to release, uh, "her" first CD through Centaur Records.
Cope is Dickerson Emeriti Professor at UCSC—he attempted to retire years ago because he didn't want to go to meetings anymore—teaching graduate courses in music composition and computer-assisted composition. Cope is also an Honorary Professor of Computer Science at Xiamen University in China and is often ascribed as a computer scientist, though he insists that he is a music professor first, not a CS professor. However, given the work he has done on Emily Howell and "her" predecessor, EMI, it's clear that he has managed to mesh the two in ways that go far beyond a musical computer program.
