Calder's Violin (2011)

Composed by Richard Hoadley, performed by Mifune Tsuji, Saturday 22nd October 2011, Cambridge UK.

Performance by Marcus Barcham-Stevens at the 2012 SuperCollider Symposium in London:

Video of a rehearsal of the piece allowing video of the computer screen:

Calder's Violin from Richard Hoadley on Vimeo.

'Calder's Violin' is a composition for violin and automatic piano. The music is algorithmically generated, including the violin part which is notated live as the piece progresses. The general textures and references of the music are intended to be predictable, but detail is new each time: an attempt to emulate in the medium of electronically generated music the 'mystifyingly exquisite variation' of performance on traditional, acoustic instruments. Some of the material for Calder's Violin has been previously developed for the on-going dance and music project 'Triggered'.

The piece is primarily composed in the music programming environment, SuperCollider.

This piece uses the software INScore and Guido significantly, both currently being developed by the Grame Computer Music Research Lab.
- More information on INScore.
- More information on Guido.

Papers involving Calder's Violin

(2012) Notating Algorithms
Symposium for Performance of Electronic and Experimental Music (SPEEC)
University of Oxford, January 6-7

(2011) Real-time generation of music notation using algorithms and physical movement
DMRN+6: Digital Music Research Network One-day Workshop 2011
Queen Mary University of London, Tuesday 20th December

Other video and audio examples

Video of a concert performance of the piece:

Calder's Violin from Richard Hoadley on Vimeo.