Generative Music: A Form without a Format

This paper explores the history and context of generative music dissemination in the form of distributable computational systems, rather than merely as rendered fixed-media outputs. Coinciding developments in musical scores and technology are highlighted and framed as the basis on which much contemporary work stands. After contextualising computer-based generative music as a narrative that extends over five decades of academic research and development, it introduces a few selected projects and expounds the heterogeneous nature of generative systems. The problem of technological formats for the music will be discussed and contextualised with current developments that point to diverse future possibilities. The paper discusses the musicology of generative music, arguing that musicologists, critics and reviewers have to engage with the natural score format of generative music, namely the code itself.