Robert Barry is a freelance writer and composer. His latest book is Compact Disc (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Award-winning performer Holly Herndon is using artificial intelligence to pioneer novel forms of composition, pushing back against AI-generated music that produces an endless glut of the same instead of anything radically new.
The great composer Ennio Morricone’s melodic writing was among the most distinctive in cinematic history. But beyond his movie musical classics, the “Maestro” was also committed to the radical democratization of music.