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54
Computer Music Journal
Computer Music Journal, 25:1, pp. 54–61, Spring 2001© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Music composition processes can be envisioned ascomplex systems involving a plurality of operatinglevels. Abstractions of musical ideas are mani-fested in myriad ways and degrees, one of which isof course their suitability for implementation as al-gorithms, enabling musicians to explore possibili-ties that would otherwise lie out of reach.However, the role of algorithms (finite computablefunctions, in Turing’s sense) is not to be simplyreified in a composition.Composers use computers not only as “number-crunching” devices, but also as interactive partnersto perform operations where the output depends onactual performance. Composers are concerned withthe creation of musical situations emerging con-cretely out of a critical interaction with their mate-rials, including their algorithms. This task cannotbe exhausted by a linear (a priori, non-interactive)problem-solving approach. Interaction is herematching an important feature of musical composi-tion processes, giving room for the emergence of ir-reducible situations through non-linear interaction.
Irreducibility is perhaps a key word in this con-text, as we are dealing with music’s categories andends. Music is not dependent on logical constructsunverified by physical experience. Composers, es-pecially those using computers, have learned—sometimes painfully—that the formal rigor of agenerative function does not guarantee by itselfthe musical coherence of a result. Music cannot beconfused with (or reduced to) a formalized disci-pline: even if music actually uses knowledge andtools coming from formalized disciplines, formal-ization does not play a foundational role in regardto musical processes. I will refer in this article to a“realist” ontological principle relying on “com-mitment to action” which can shed light on thenature of musical compositional processes in re-gard to formal constructivism. Additionally, musi-cal processes, at least from the composer’s point ofview, are not situations “out there” waiting to bediscovered: they are rather to be composed (sincethey did not exist anywhere before being com-posed), and hence they cannot be considered prop-erly as modeling activities, even if they use—anddeeply absorb—models, knowledge, and tools com-ing from scientific domains (acoustic and psychoa-coustic modeling, for example).In fact, music transforms this knowledge andthese tools into its own ontological concern: tocreate specific musical situations (musical “statesof affairs”). To this end, a palette of diverse com-positional instances is needed, including strategiesfor controlling and qualifying results and choices,according to a given musical project. These com-positional instances, to reiterate, are not envisagedhere in the frame of the traditional approach to al-gorithmic (automatic) composition: they are in-stead seen in the light of the ongoing paradigmshift from algorithmics to interaction (Wegner1997, Bello 1997), where the general-purpose com-puter is regarded as one component of complexsystems (Winograd 1979), and where the com-poser, being another component of these complexsystems, is imbedded in a network within whichhe or she can act, design, and experience concretetools and (meaningful) musical situations.
It is under this perspective, I believe, that the for-mal status of musical processes can be approached—in a certain way “revisited”—as I will try to do inthis article, focusing on ontological questions. Com-puter music practice (computer-generated and com-puter-assisted composition) is of course theunderlying frame of the discussion here offered, be-cause these reflections have arisen from theauthor’s daily exposure, as a composer, to a situa-tion in which algorithms, choices, and “musicaltheses” are themselves confronted within an “ac-tion/perception feedback loop” which seems to con-
 Some OntologicalRemarks about MusicComposition Processes
Horacio Vaggione
Université de Paris VIII, Département de Musique2 rue de la liberté, 93526 Saint-DenisParis, FranceHoracio.Vaggione@univ-paris8.fr
 
Vaggione
55
stitute definitively the pertinent instance of valida-tion of musical processes.
 Approaching Music’s Ontology
Schönberg’s Criticism of “External Calculus”
Sch
ö
nberg states in his S
tyle and Idea
that
“
apurely external calculus system calls for a formalconstruction whose primitive nature is suitableonly to primitive ideas
”
(Sch
ö
nberg 1951). This re-mark points, in the particular language of its au-thor, to the mismatches that may be caused byliteral application of operations which may be suc-cessfully applied in other fields, but which are notguaranteed to function pertinently in a musicalcontext, as long as they are not absorbed and trans-formed into elements proper to
“
music itself.
”
The Difficulty of Defining “Music Itself”
However, it can be argued here that the very ideaof
“
music itself
”
encounters a major difficulty: no-body can say what music is, other than by meansof a normative proposition, because
“
music itself
”
is in fact a non-demonstrable thing, and its prac-tice is neither arbitrary nor based on physical ormetaphysical foundations:
It is not because we know, in one manner oranother (and without being able to say how),what music is that we also speak of atonal orconcrete music as music. We use the word
“
music
”
according to certain rules, and theseare neither very precise nor based on the
“
na-ture of things
”
, even if they cannot be con-sidered as arbitrary. (Bouveresse 1971, p. 318)
Certainly, we know that there is no necessity todefine completely the concept of music in order tocreate, play, or listen to music. Furthermore, weknow that the very existence of music, as a sharedpractice, would in fact be impossible if one shouldpreviously have to define completely the conceptof music. This being the case, an ontology of mu-sic should refer to the music
’
s status cautiously,taking care to not fall into reductionist traps.
“Universals” Are Not Needed
On one side, there is no necessity to affirm the ex-istence of
“
universals
”
standing above musicalpractices, whatever these universals might be: aPlatonic Idea, the dogmatics of proportion, a nor-mative foundation of harmony, and so on. Ofcourse, there are primitive principles underlyingmusical practices, but these should not be quali-fied as foundations of
“
music itself,
”
for thiswould negate the possibility of developing othermusical practices related to different assumptions.Sch
ö
nberg
’
s famous statement about the
“
libera-tion of the dissonance
”
can be seen in this light:
“
the expressions
‘
consonance
’
and
‘
dissonance
’
, ifreferred to an antithesis, are erroneous; it dependsonly on the capacity of an analytic hearing to be-come familiarized with the higher harmonics
”
(Sch
ö
nberg 1951, p. 16). Evidently, there are manymusical practices (including functional tonality)that are based precisely on the antithesis thatSch
ö
nberg does not accept, as he is looking herefor another reference concerning musical relation-ships. But this does not invalidate his statementabout analytic hearing: on the contrary, his state-ment affirms the possibility of
“
music
”
beyondthe musical world based on a given functionality(tonality, in this case) by stressing the fact thatthere may be other equally conceivable musicalassumptions and constraints to which the percep-tions of a given musical world are to be related.
Music Reveals Its Own “Creation Principle”
On the other side, there is an ultra-relativist thesisaffirming that
“
music is everything we call mu-sic
”
; but to follow this line would meant to fallinto another reductionistic trap, analogous to thefirst one. The example just referred to, showingthe relationship between hearing (lower or higherharmonics) and specific musical assumptions and
 
56
Computer Music Journal
constraints (specific kinds of relationships andfunctionalities, such as consonance and disso-nance), tells us why it is so. We can understand,then, that in spite of many attempts at reduction,music-making remains an activity revealing itsown
“
creation principle
”
where, to paraphraseFinsler (1996),
“
consistency implies existence,
”
taking the word
“
existence
”
to mean the presenceof a given state of affairs. We continue to use theword
“
music
”
according to certain rules, whichare
“
neither very precise nor based on the natureof things
”
(in the words of Bouveresse, quotedabove), to refer to musical practices that cannot beconsidered arbitrary. We do this while focusing oncertain operations, categories, facts and ends thatwe determine to be specific to music, or at least tomusical
“
possible worlds.
”
Of course, this use of the word
“
music
”
does notbring up the ultimate argument about the natureof music, but only refers to its existence in onto-logical terms, referring to a given state of affairs. Acomplementary
“
anthropo-logistic
”
argument mayalso be considered here, as musical practices existwithin a given
“
style of life,
”
or
“
a culture of oneperiod,
”
as Wittgenstein (1953) would say. On an-other account, Goodman
’
s nominalism (Goodman1976) may be evoked as well. But I will not discussthese matters further, as the aim of this article isnot to engage in a discussion about current philo-sophical approaches: the aforementioned
“
creationprinciple,
”
I think, may be sufficient to assess mu-sic
“
as is,
”
without falling into reductionism.
Formalization Versus Commitment to Action:A Realist Ontology
As stated earlier, music uses knowledge from for-mal disciplines and creates a myriad of abstrac-tions (operations encapsulating operations, etc.).However, we should assume that what falls underthe heading of formal abstraction becomes, in mu-sic, part of the reality in which music develops itsproductive categories. A musical process includesa plurality of layers of operations of diverse kinds:it can certainly use formal tools as generative andtransformative devices; however, other instancesare needed, involving concrete actions and percep-tions, in order to qualify results and choices ac-cording to a given musical project. Here,formalization is not foundational, but operational,local, and tactical (see Sinaceur 1991 and Granger1994). A (musical) system of symbols can be for-mally structured (i.e., built as a system includingfunctions manifesting diverse degrees of abstrac-tion) without being completely formalized, thelast case arising, strictly speaking, when all non-defined symbols present in the system are properlyenumerated (or, if preferred, when nothing is hid-den). As Wegner noted with respect to other do-mains, the key argument against completeformalization of such things as musical composi-tion processes is
“
the inherent trade off betweenlogical completeness and commitment to action,
”
because
“
committed choice to the course of actionis inherently incomplete
”
(Wegner 1997).We can recall here Finsler
’
s ideas expressed inthe 1920s and cited by Wegner as pioneering a
“
re-alist ontology,
”
where a
“
creation principle
”
isposited:
“
concepts exist independently of formal-isms in which they are expressed
”
(Finsler 1996).Finsler
“
went beyond Hilbert
’
s formalism in ap-plying the principle
‘
consistency implies exist-ence
’
, accepting the existence of conceptsindependently of whether they are formalized
”
(Wegner and Goldin 1999). We can easily para-phrase Finsler, substituting
“
concepts
”
for
“
musi-cal ideas
”
to reinforce a
“
realist ontology
”
affirming that musical ideas exist independently oftheir possible formalization or even
“
constructability
”
(since they can emerge from aplurality of interactive factors).
 Algorithms, Interaction, and Complex Systems
Evidently, using computers (the most general sym-bolic processors that have ever existed) drives mu-sic activity to an expansion of its formal categories.Computer algorithms (whatever the paradigm onwhich they are based) can be considered as formalconstructs where reasoning is embodied in ma-
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