Welcome to my composition website and thank you for

visiting. Here you can find audio, scores, and explana-

tions of my main works. Click any work title on the left

to access its content. You can read about me below.

 

I started composing at age nine and was largely self-

taught until college. I earned a BM in composition from

the University of Michigan studying with William

Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Betsy Jolas, Susan Botti and

Erik Santos, then an MM and DMA in composition from

New England Conservatory studying with Malcolm

Peyton. During my DMA, I started focusing on com-

posing algorithmic music, that is music made entirely

by following strict rules.

 

My interest in algorithmic composition is rooted in my

long-standing interest in the nature of beauty. At about

age fifteen, I started trying to find and explain patterns

in my experience of musical pleasure and then systematically apply my explanations to writing

music. I have ever since been an amatuer aesthetic philosopher and an avid trespasser into re-

lated fields of science. I am not satisfied to intuit beautiful music, but I want to understand ex-

actly why it is beautiful and how to consciously extend its beauty. You can read about my aes-

thetic philosophy and the science that informs it in my book The Aesthetic Philosophy behind

Metacomposition 2 by clicking here.
 

While my interest in aesthetics steered me toward composing with consciously devised prin-

ciples, what actually drove me to the extreme of algorithmic composition was my obsession

with revising my first piano concerto. After each revision, I would list the draft's good and bad

properties and plan strategies for composing a better draft. By happenstance, one of these

strategies became generatively specific and, long story short, I computer-automated it.

​

Computer-automating a composition process yielded more than the one composition that first

necesitated it. It opened an inexaustable sound-world. I then realized that the twenty-first cen-

tury composer is no longer limited to composing finite compositions but with the computer can

compose "metacompositions", processes that can endlessly generate compositions within a

composer's aesthetic.

 

Feel free to email me for any reason at broderickva@gmail.com or through the form below.