It is generally agreed upon that the Illiac Suite is the first piece of music composed by an electronic computer.[1] The piece, programmed by the computer and performed from notation, in the form of a string quartet, was the result of a collaboration by Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Issacson in 1956. At the time, both composers were Professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The piece consists of four movements, called experiments: the first is about the generation of cantus firmi, the second generates four-voice segments with various rules, the third deals with rhythm, dynamics and playing instructions, and the fourth with various models and probabilities for generative grammars or Markoff chains.[2]