Musings on computer music perennity

It should come as no surprise that, at more than sixty years of age, the computer music field starts to ponder its legacy: what started almost as a ‘challenge’ is now a well-established academic practice which has had a profound impact over the whole music and entertainment industries. More often than not, breakthroughs in our field were initially established through pursuing musical or aesthetical, rather than purely technical, goals: this is especially the case in ‘early’ computer music. Clearly, it is now time to reflect on the numerous techniques (many of which make the foundations of current music software) that have been initiated over the years. Perhaps one of the best ways of examining these is through in-depth multimodal analyses of computer music works: this approach would constitute an initial effort towards a critical evaluation of computer music history.