Some Notes about Soviet Computer Music

The author discusses the development of computer music in the USSR. He shows that contemporary Soviet computer music came into existence on the basis of achievements in the sphere of electronic music. Experiments in electronic music began in the 1960s and opened up a great number of new, unprecedented timbres for Soviet composers. At the same time, use of computers in structural musicology, folkloristics and psychoacoustics produced some fundamental works that revealed new ways of looking at musical perception and hence changed the way modern composers looked at musical form. The author also provides brief portraits of 15 Soviet computer composers and meditates on the future of computer music.