For those who own a Macintosh, but not MAX, I uploaded a stand-alone
version of:

     LEXIKON-SONATE (1992 ff.)
     an interactive and infinite realtime composition for
     computer-controlled piano

to the Disklavier-Archive (maintained by Bob Willey)

     ftp://wendy.ucsd.edu/pub/midi/disklavier/essl/Lexikon-Sonate.sea.hqx

It comes with a runtime version of MAX (called MAXplay 2.5.3) and a huge
library of compositional routines.

Unlike former versions of "Lexikon-Sonate" which need MAX and a special
installation procedure, now it will work like plug'n'play.

I am indebted to Gerhard Eckel (IRCAM / Paris) who extended the already
existing program in a way that it can be played on different MIDI-devices
such as Yamaha Disklavier, Boesendorfer SE Grand Piano, or samplers /
synthesizer. A setup routine now allows to adjust the velocity range of the
program to that of the chosen MIDI-instrument.

---

LEXIKON-SONATE is an infinite composition for MIDI-controlled player piano
which composes and performs itself in realtime. Up to now it consists of 24
music-generation modules which are related in a very complex way as a
musical HyperText. Each module generates a specific and perceptional
characteristic musical output due to a certain compositional strategy
applied. A module represents an abstract model of a specific musical
behaviour. It does not contain any pre-organized musical material, but a
formal description of it and the methods how it is being processed. The
idea of autopoiesis - material organizing itself due to certain constraints
- plays an important rule.

By using a lot of different random generators which are controlling each
other (which - according to serial thinking - form a scale between a
completely deterministic and a completely chaotic behaviour) new variants
of the same model are generated. Variants that may differ dramatically from
each other, though they are always perceptible as "inheritances" of the
given structural model.

LEXIKON-SONATE is represented by a computer program written in MAX (an
interactive graphical programming environment for multimedia, music, and
MIDI running on a Macintosh; =A9 by IRCAM / Opcode Inc.) which takes
advantage of my "Real Time Composition Library" - a collection of
MAX-objects designed for musical composition. It contains numerous function
for musical composition such as rhythm generators, harmonic tools, random
functions etc. and allows you to experiment with a number of compositional
techniques, such as serial procedures, permutations and controlled
randomness.

---

More informations about LEXIKON-SONATE can be found at:

     http://www.ping.at/users/essl/works/Lexikon-Sonate.html

Informations regarding the REAL TIME COMPOSITION LIBRARY (which latest
version 2.2 was recently released) can be obtained from:

     http://www.ping.at/users/essl/works/rtc.html

•__________________________________________________________________
 Dr. Karlheinz Essl
 SAMT - Studio for Advanced Music Technology  (Linz-Hagenberg / Austria)
 E-Mail: essl@ping.at
 WWW:    http://www.ping.at/users/essl/index.html
___________________________________________________________________