Robert Barry is a freelance writer and composer. His latest book is Compact Disc (Bloomsbury, 2020).
The absurd titles of Erik Satie’s compositions would provoke howls of laughter at concerts in early 20th-century Paris. Some critics condemned Satie’s eccentricities — but a new book argues that his wit is what makes his experimental work so important.
Award-winning performer Holly Herndon is using artificial intelligence to pioneer novel forms of composition, pushing back against AI-generated music that produces an endless glut of the same instead of anything radically new.
The great composer Ennio Morricone’s melodic writing was among the most distinctive in cinematic history. But beyond his movie musical classics, the “Maestro” was also committed to the radical democratization of music.