Create music with Fortran

In that book published in 1963
FormalizedMusic

there’s a full listing in Fortran for composing music based on stochastic principles.

The book is available on Google book

The code is now on Github:

How to compile:

How the program work is explained here:

Ronald Squibbs, “6. Iannis Xenakis’s Free Stochastic Music Program as an Aid to Analysis” in Kanach, Sharon, and Peter Nelson, eds. 2024. Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies. 1st ed. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.

Here’s a result, “ST/10=1,080262”, by “Ensemble de Musique Contemporaine de Paris”

  • ST for stochastic
  • 10 for ten instruments
  • 080262: this was first computed by an IBM 7090 the 8th of February 1962

[Edit] I wasn’t convicted this piece has his place in the “Music is the best” thread :wink: [/Edit]

Finally a quote from John Backus, the father of Fortran:

Well, don’t go into software. It’s just such a complicated mess that you just frazzle your brains trying to do anything worthwhile.

All my sources comes from this post in French:

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