Laurie Spiegel

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American composer Laurie Spiegel was born in Chicago on September 20, 1945. She has worked at Bell Laboratories and in computer graphics. Primarily known for her groundbreaking electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse, she also plays the guitar and lute.

Spiegel, who attended Shimer College, Brooklyn College, and Oxford University, received a degree in social sciences and went on to study composition with Jacob Druckman and Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School. Her early musical experiences were largely self-directed, beginning with the mandolin, guitar, and banjo she had as a child which she learned to play by ear; she taught herself music notation at the age of 20, after which she began writing down her compositions.

Spiegel was seen by some as a pioneer of the New York new-music scene. She withdrew from this scene in the early 1980s, believing that its focus had shifted from artistic process to product. While she continues to support herself though software development, Spiegel's aims to use technology in music as a means of furthering her art rather than as an end in itself.

[edit] Discography

Ooppera, 2004. An album of 10-minute operas created from processed animal sounds.
Harmonices Mundi (1977, released 2004). A realization of Kepler's vision of planetary motion.
The P-ART Project - 12 Portraits, 2001. 12-composer compilation including Spiegel's "Conversational Paws".
Obsolete Systems, 2001. A retrospective of Spiegel's work through the 70s and 80s, performed on currently-obsolete electronic instruments.
OHM - The Early Gurus of Electronic Music, 2000. 3-CD compilation featuring Spiegel's 1974 Appalachian Grove.
Miniatures 2 - a sequence of sixty tiny masterpieces, 2000. A sixty-artist compilation soundtrack to Dan Sandin's video A Volume of Julia Sets.
The Female of the Species, a 2-CD compilation of female experimental composers
Enhanced Gravity, 1999. Compositions as well as text and multimedia art by Spiegel, also featuring multimedia art by 9 others.
Cocks Crow, Dogs Bark: New Compositional Intentions, 1998. Companion CD to Leonardo Music Journal #7, featuring The Unquestioned Answer, described in that journal.
Women in Electronic Music - 1977, 1977, re-released 1998. Compilation CD of women in electronic music.
Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, 1996. Companion CD to the 20th Anniversary Issue of Computer Music Journal
Unseen Worlds, 1991, re-released 1994. Works by Laurie Spiegel.
The Virtuoso in the Computer Age - III, 1993. Compilation CD of four electronic artists, featuring Spiegel's Cavis Muris (1986).
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, 1992. Music from Sounds of Earth produced to be sent up on the Voyager spacecraft, containing on excerpt of Harmonices Mundi.
New American Music Vol. 2. Out of print LP.
The Expanding Universe. Contains 4 pieces created using the GROOVE system at Bell Labs.
Music for New Electronic Media, 1977. Early works by several electronic composers.