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TheComputer Music Center (CMC) atColumbia University is the oldest center forelectronic andcomputer music research in theUnited States. Electronic music work began at Columbia University andBarnard College in 1951 as the Columbia Experimental Music Studio. In 1958, the name was changed to theColumbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1996, under the directorship ofBrad Garton, the center's name was changed to the Columbia University Computer Music Center.[1]
The Computer Music Center is housed inPrentis Hall, 632 West 125th Street,New York City, across the street from Columbia's 17-acreManhattanville campus. The 5,400-square-foot facility consists of studios for teaching, electronic music, recording, spatial audio, a workshop for analog electronics and digital fabrication, and numerouscomposition and art studios for graduate student use. Projects to come out of the CMC since the 1990s include the following:
The director of the CMC isSeth Cluett, and the CMC offers classes taught byGeorge E. Lewis,Seth Cluett,David Soldier, Anna Meadors, and Mark Santolucito, as well as visiting faculty who give seminars every year. Through the Department of Music, the center supports the work of DMA students in Music Composition, undergraduate music majors and minors, and collaborative research with departments across the university. In collaboration with the Visual Arts Program in theColumbia University School of the Arts, the Computer Music Center offers a sound art MFA program directed byMiya Masaoka, which was founded in 2014 byDouglas Repetto, who served as Director until 2016.
The forerunner of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was a studio founded in the early 1950s byColumbia University professorsVladimir Ussachevsky andOtto Luening, andPrinceton University professorsMilton Babbitt andRoger Sessions. Originally concerned with experiments in musiccomposition involving the new technology of reel-to-reeltape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. The center was officially established with a grant from theRockefeller Foundation in 1959 which was used to finance the acquisition of theRCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer from its owner, RCA.[2]
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 inPrentis Hall, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. Significant pieces of electronic music realized on the Synthesizer included Babbitt'sVision and Prayer andCharles Wuorinen'sTime's Encomium, which was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 1964Columbia Records released an album titled simplyColumbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which was produced principally on the RCA synthesizer.
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Most of the luminaries in the field of electronic music (andavant-garde music in general) visited, worked, or studied at the Electronic Music Center, includingEdgard Varèse,Chou Wen-chung,Halim El-Dabh,Michiko Toyama,Bülent Arel,Mario Davidovsky,Charles Dodge,Pril Smiley,Alice Shields,Wendy Carlos, Dariush Dolat-Shahi,Kenjiro Ezaki andLuciano Berio.[3] The center also acted as aconsulting agency for other electronic music studios in theWestern Hemisphere, giving them advice on optimum studio design and helping them purchase equipment.[4]
The staff engineers at the center underPeter Mauzey developed customized equipment to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes oftape delay machines, custom mixing consoles, and analogtriggers designed to facilitateinteroperability between other (often custom-made) synthesizer equipment. The center also has a large collection ofBuchla,Moog, andSerge Modular synthesizers.
By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as its classicalanalog tape techniques were being surpassed by parallel work in the field ofcomputer music. By the mid-1980s the Columbia and Princeton facilities had ceased their formal affiliation, with the Princeton music department strengthening its affiliation withBell Labs and founding a computer music studio underGodfrey Winham andPaul Lansky (seePrinceton Sound Lab).
The original Columbia facility was re-organized in 1996 under the leadership ofBrad Garton and was renamed the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Garton served as Director from 1995 until 2021, whenSeth Cluett became Director joined byAnna Meadors as Assistant Director.
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