Chowning, John (EN)

Chowning John MacLeod, *22 August 1934 Salem (New Jersey), American composer and theoretician, pioneer of computer music. He studied music at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, BA 1959, and then in 1959–62 with N. Boulanger in Paris and at Stanford University in California (1962–64, PhD 1966). He led the Computer Music and Acoustic Group at the same university in 1966–74, and he lectured in composition and conducted research on computer sound synthesis from 1975. In 1975, he founded the Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), which he directed until 1996. He collaborated with other institutions dealing with programming and computer music in the United States and Europe, including Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and the Institut de Recherche et de CoordinationAcoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. Chowning was a scholarship holder of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) in West Berlin (1974) and three times of IRCAM (1977–79, 1981 and 1985). In 1988, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, in 1995, he received the Officer’s Cross of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris, and in 1994, the National Order of the Legion of Honour. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Wittenberg University (1990), Université de la Méditerranée in Marseille (2002), Queen’s University in Belfast (2010) and an honorary doctorate in musicology by the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (2016). He is often invited to lectures and scientific conferences in many countries, including in Warsaw in 1986.

In 1967, Chowning discovered the frequency modulation (FM) algorithm, in which both the carrier and modulating signals are in the acoustic frequency range. This was a breakthrough in computer sound synthesis, allowing the simple and efficient creation of sounds with complex spectra, the course of which could be controlled in time. He spent the next 6 years working on using this discovery to create a system of practical importance for music. In 1973, Stanford University began cooperation with the Japanese company Yamaha, which led to the creation of Chowning’s FM-based DX and SY series synthesisers, which in turn led to a breakthrough in the field of digital synthesisers. Chowning’s second major achievement was the invention of a way to simulate moving sound sources in two-dimensional space, which was used in his compositions and inspired many composers of electroacoustic music.

Literature: J. Aiken, John Chowning: Computer Synthesis Expert at Stanford, “Contemporary Keyboard” 1978 no. 4 (9); D. Mercier Interview with John Chowning, “Les cahiersde l’ACME”, November 1985; C. Roads, John Chowning on Composition, in: Composers and the Computer, Los Altos (California) 1985; Tech Talk – John Chowning on Technology and Music, “Electronics & Music Maker” V, Cambridge 1989; O. Mattis, Chowning, John M(acLeod), in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie,  J. Tyrrell. London 2001; V. Tiffon, L’ambivalence de l’harmonie et du timbre chez Jean-Claude Risset et John Chowning, “Analyse musicale” 2003 no. 47; P. Lehrman, A Talk with John Chowning. Extreme Vibrato and other Accidental Flashes of Genius. “Mix Magazine” February 2005; P. Lehrman, A Talk with John Chowning. Making Electronics Sing, “Mix Magazine” March 2005; P.A. Castanet, É. Gayou, J.C. Risset et al. (ed.), John Chowning. Portraits polychromes. Paris 2009; A. Nelson, The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution, Cambridge 2015.