1 place Igor Stravinsky

Contemporary music composition is a highly creative and disciplined activity that requires free expression of ideas and sophisticated computer programming. This paper pre-sents a technique for structured observation of expert crea-tive behavior, as well as Polyphony, a novel interface for systematically studying all phases of computer-aided com-position. Polyphony is a unified user interface that inte-grates interactive paper and electronic user interfaces for composing music. It supports fluid transitions between informal sketches and formal computer-based representa-tions. We asked 12 composers to use Polyphony to compose an electronic accompaniment to a 20-second instrumental composition by Anton Webern. All successfully created a complete, original composition in an hour and found the task challenging but fun. The resulting dozen comparable snapshots of the composition process reveal how composers both adapt and appropriate tools in their own way. Author Keywords Interactive paper; music composition; creativit