Abstract

In this book review essay, Justus discusses Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style (2001) by David Cope. The review begins by drawing a parallel between the Turing Test and evaluating the compositions of Cope’s Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI) before providing an overview of how this computer programme works and the commentaries included in the book (by Douglas Hofstadter, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Bernard Greenberg, Steve Larson, Jonathan Berger, and Daniel Dennett). The essay then raises questions of absolute music versus music with referential meaning, asking whether EMI’s compositions represent a sort of “musical Jabberwocky” (in reference to Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem) in which syntax and semantics have become dissociated.