Max Mathews

Max Vernon Mathews was born in Columbus, Nebraska, on November 13, 1926. He studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Sc.D. in 1954. Dr. Mathews is an American computer scientist and engineer widely regarded as the father of the field of computer music. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the 1950s, Mathews wrote MUSIC, the first program to represent sound on a digital computer, ushering in the age of digital music. He has since been a pioneer in most subsequent developments in digital audio research, synthesis, and human-computer interaction as it pertains to music performance.

Mathews wrote the following description of his work for "Horizons in Computer Music", March 8-9, 1997, at Indiana University:

"Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V. A host of others wrote Music 10, Music 360, Music 15, CSound, Cmix. Many exciting pieces are now performed digitally. The IBM 704 and its siblings were strictly studio machines--they were far too slow to synthesize music in real-time. Chowning's FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive, digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it affordable.

"Starting with the Groove program in 1970, my interests have focused on live performance and what a computer can do to aid a performer. I made a controller, the radio-baton, plus a program, the conductor program, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores. In addition to contemporary composers, these proved attractive to soloists as a way of playing orchestral accompaniments. Singers often prefer to play their own accompaniments. Recently I have added improvisational options which make it easy to write compositional algorithms. These can involve precomposed sequences, random functions, and live performance gestures. The algorithms are written in the C language. We have taught a course in this area to Stanford undergraduates for two years. To our happy surprise, the students liked learning and using C. Primarily I believe it gives them a feeling of complete power to command the computer to do anything it is capable of doing."

In 1961, Mathews arranged the well-known song Daisy Bell ("Daisy, daisy") for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others. Arthur C. Clark heard the computer-synthesized song when he visited the labs, and later suggested that Hal the computer sing it in 2001 A Space Odyssey while being disconnected.

Mathews directed the Acoustical and Behavioral Research Center at Bell Laboratories from 1962 to 1985, which carried out research in speech communication, visual communication, human memory and learning, programmed instruction, analysis of subjective opinions, physical acoustics, and industrial robotics. From 1974 to 1980 he was the Scientific Advisor to the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), Paris, France, and since 1987 has been Professor of Music (Research) at Stanford University.

Mathews is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Acoustical Society of America, the IEEE, and the Audio Engineering Society. He holds a Silver Medal in Musical Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America, and the Chevalier dan l'order des Arts et Lettres, Republique Francaise.

The software package Max/MSP is named after him.