The Computer Music Center (CMC) at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

is the oldest center for electronic and

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

research in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Location

The CMC is housed in

Prentis Hall Prentis Hall is a historic building located on the Manhattanville campus of Columbia University at 632 West 125th Street. It houses the university's department of music and the Computer Music Center, as well as facilities for the School of the ...

, 632 West 125th Street,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, across the street from Columbia's 17-acre

Manhattanville Manhattanville (also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan bordered on the north by 135th Street; on the south by 122nd and 125th Streets; on the west by Hudson River; and ...

campus. The facility consists of a large graduate research facility specializing in computer music and multimedia research, as well as a number of composition and

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enou ...

s for student use. Projects to come out of the CMC since the 1990s include: * ArtBots * dorkbot *

PeRColate Percolation (from Latin ''percolare'', "to filter" or "trickle through"), in physics, chemistry and materials science, refers to the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials. It is described by Darcy's law. Broader applicati ...

* Real-Time Cmix The Computer Music Center offers the Sound Arts MFA Program, currently directed by

Miya Masaoka Miya Masaoka (born 1958, Washington, DC) is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, elect ...

. The program was formerly directed by Douglas Repetto until 2016. The director of the CMC is Brad Garton, and the CMC offers classes taught by George E. Lewis,

Seth Cluett Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. A ...

, David Soldier, and Ben Holtzman, as well as a large number of visiting faculty who give seminars every year.

History

The forerunner of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was a studio founded in the early 1950s by

professors Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

professors

Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia to Albert E ...

and

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 ...

. Originally concerned with experiments in music composition 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 philanthropy, philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, aft ...

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.

RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, Computer Music Center at Columbia University, NIME2007

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

, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. A number of significant pieces in the electronic music repertoire were realized on the Synthesizer, including 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 performed his works and other 20th-century music as pianist and conductor. He composed more than ...

's '' Time's Encomium'', which was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 1964

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

released an album titled simply '' Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center'', which was produced principally on the RCA synthesizer. RCA Mark II victor - closeup (1)

Most of the luminaries in the field of electronic music (and

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

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-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coine ...

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 Univer ...

, 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 best known for her electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving ...

, Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Kenjiro Ezaki and

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

. The center also acted as a

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

agency for other electronic music studios in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...

, giving them advice on optimum studio design and helping them purchase equipment. The staff engineers at the center under

Peter Mauzey Peter Mauzey (born 1930 in Poughkeepsie, NY), is an electrical engineer associated with the development of electronic music in the 1950s and 1960s at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He served as an adjunct professor at Columbia U ...

developed a large variety of customized equipment designed to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines,

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for t ...

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 defi ...

between other (often custom-made) synthesizer equipment. The center also had a large collection of

Buchla Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments (BEMI) was a manufacturer of synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The origins of the company could be found in Buchla & Associates, created in 1963 by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla of Berkeley, Californi ...

, Moog, and Serge Modular synthesizers. By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as the classical analog tape techniques it used were being surpassed by parallel work in the field of

. 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, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

and founding a computer music studio under

Godfrey Winham Godfrey Winham (11 December 1934 – 26 April 1975) was an English-born music theorist and composer of contemporary classical music who moved to the United States. While in the UK, Winham studied with Hans Keller, and contributed brief reviews an ...

and

Paul Lansky Paul Lansky (born June 18, 1944, in New York) 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, studying wit ...

(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.

Notable people associated with CMC

* Bradford Garton, Director, Professor of Music * Seth Cluett, Assistant Director *

, Director of the Sound Arts MFA Program *

Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar an ...

, 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, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', 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