It is hard to look at this post and its results and not remind ourselves Lady Lovelace's quote from nearly 200 years ago.
"[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...
Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."[0]
Edit: s/300/200/. Thanks to icebraining I stand corrected.
It's worth pointing out that the idea to have automata make music predates Lovelace. Music making automata were a staple of the renaissance. For example the mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, when visiting the "Kunstkammer" of Rudolf II in 1598, was amazed at an automaton representing a drummer who could "beat his drum with
greater self-assurance than a live one" [1].
Incidentally, Kepler corresponded with Wilhelm Schickard on the latter's "arithmeticum organum", the first ever proper mechanical calulator (could do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).
Automating creativity was very much an idea with much currency in the renaissance. Indeed some of the key advances in mechanical automata, which later evolved into computers, where driven by the desire to automate creativity [2]. The "conceptual leap" that some people lazily ascribe to Lovelace, wasn't hers!
[1] Jessica Wolfe, "Humanism, machinery, and Renaissance literature".
[2] Douglas Summers Stay, "Machinamenta: The thousand year quest to build a creative machine". Associated blog: http://machinamenta.blogspot.com
"[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...
Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."[0]
Edit: s/300/200/. Thanks to icebraining I stand corrected.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#Conceptual_leap