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arxiv: 1907.04470 · v1 · pith:VBT3DAVSnew · submitted 2019-07-10 · 💻 cs.MM

Learning from History: Recreating and Repurposing Sister Harriet Padberg's Computer Composed Canon and Free Fugue

Richard Savery , Benjamin Genchel , Jason Smith , Anthony Caulkins , Molly Jones , Anna Savery This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-24 23:38 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.MM
keywords algorithmic compositionHarriet Padbergcomputer musiccanon and fuguehistorical recreationtext-to-musicopen source
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The pith

A modern open-source recreation of Harriet Padberg's 1964 algorithmic composition program is applied in three new musical works.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper examines an early text-to-music program written by Harriet Padberg in 1964 as part of her dissertation. It describes building an open-source version with a contemporary interface while preserving the original rules for generating canons and free fugues from text input. Three composers then use the recreated tool to produce new pieces. One addresses the historical lack of women in composition competitions, another treats the original design as a direct composition aid, and the third turns its melodic rules into a playable software instrument. The work shows how historical algorithmic systems can support fresh creative output in current contexts.

Core claim

The authors recreate Padberg's 1964 program for text-to-music generation of canons and free fugues, supply it with a modern interface, and demonstrate its use as an artistic tool in three compositions: Not Even One by Molly Jones, Brevity by Anna Savery, and The Padberg Piano by Anthony Caulkins.

What carries the argument

The open-source recreation of the 1964 text-to-music program, which applies fixed rules for canons and free fugues to input text and now runs with an updated interface for direct artistic use.

If this is right

  • Early algorithmic rules can generate material for pieces that comment on social issues such as representation in composition.
  • The original software logic can function directly as a composition method rather than only as a historical artifact.
  • Melodic generation procedures from 1964 can be extracted to create new playable instruments.
  • Revisiting pre-1970 computer music programs supplies both preserved techniques and practical tools for today.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The same recreation approach could be applied to other early algorithmic composition programs to test whether they also support contemporary artistic reuse.
  • Such projects may offer a model for digital archives that treat historical code as active creative material rather than static documentation.
  • Educational settings in music technology could incorporate these recreated tools to let students experience the constraints and possibilities of 1960s algorithmic methods firsthand.

Load-bearing premise

The recreated program follows the original 1964 rules and produces outputs whose musical character remains close enough to the historical version that the new compositions still count as uses of Padberg's work.

What would settle it

Running the original 1964 code on the same text inputs as the recreation and finding materially different melodic or structural results would show the modern version does not faithfully reproduce the historical behavior.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 1907.04470 by Anna Savery, Anthony Caulkins, Benjamin Genchel, Jason Smith, Molly Jones, Richard Savery.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: The processing screen in the PyPadberg Application, displaying how characters are mapped to frequencies and rhythms. The text entry screen consists of a short introduction to the application followed by a large text box in which a user can enter text. Our application departs from the original described by Padberg in that we do not limit the entry to 60 characters, which was simply a limitation of the IBM 1… view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Padberg Keyboard [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p005_2.png] view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Non-Adjacent ’Consonances’ This ordering is also known as the Circle of Fourths/Fifths. Interval-classes 1 and 5 (or 11 and 9) are the only possible options to account for each of the 12 pitch-classes of the chromatic collection. An adjacency interval-class of 11 (or 13 - its modulo 24 inversion) is needed to scale the Circle of Fourths to the Padberg 24 pitch-class set. Interval-class 11 in the 24 set is … view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Original Bach [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_6.png] view at source ↗
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Padberg Piano tional harmonies represent all of the pitches of the scale. In the 24 pitch collection the tonic will be built on B (B F J M Q), the dominant on Q (Q U A D H), and the subdominant on L (L O S X B). Now that systems of scale, transposition, consonance, dis￾sonance, and functional harmony have been developed, con￾trapuntal composition can begin. In the spirit of Padberg’s canons, Caulkins has t… view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Harriet Padberg wrote Computer-Composed Canon and Free Fugue as part of her 1964 dissertation in Mathematics and Music at Saint Louis University. This program is one of the earliest examples of text-to-music software and algorithmic composition, which are areas of great interest in the present-day field of music technology. This paper aims to analyze the technological innovation, aesthetic design process, and impact of Harriet Padberg's original 1964 thesis as well as the design of a modern recreation and utilization, in order to gain insight to the nature of revisiting older works. Here, we present our open source recreation of Padberg's program with a modern interface and, through its use as an artistic tool by three composers, show how historical works can be effectively used for new creative purposes in contemporary contexts. Not Even One by Molly Jones draws on the historical and social significance of Harriet Padberg through using her program in a piece about the lack of representation of women judges in composition competitions. Brevity by Anna Savery utilizes the original software design as a composition tool, and The Padberg Piano by Anthony Caulkins uses the melodic generation of the original to create a software instrument.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

1 major / 0 minor

Summary. The paper analyzes Harriet Padberg's 1964 dissertation on algorithmic composition, presents an open-source modern recreation of her text-to-music program with an updated interface, and demonstrates its artistic repurposing through three new compositions: 'Not Even One' by Molly Jones (addressing representation in composition competitions), 'Brevity' by Anna Savery (using the original design as a tool), and 'The Padberg Piano' by Anthony Caulkins (deriving a software instrument from the melodic generation rules). The central claim is that such historical works can be effectively reused for contemporary creative purposes.

Significance. If the recreation is faithful, this work has moderate significance for music technology and digital humanities by documenting and reviving one of the earliest examples of computer-generated music, making it accessible via open source, and illustrating its ongoing utility through concrete artistic applications. The open-source release is a clear strength that supports reproducibility and further use.

major comments (1)
  1. [section describing the modern recreation and its utilization] The manuscript's core claim that the modern recreation enables effective contemporary use rests on the assumption that it faithfully reproduces the 1964 program's rules and output behavior, yet the provided description supplies no verification such as sample input-output pairs, rule mappings, or comparisons to the original dissertation. This is load-bearing for the assertion that the three compositions utilize the historical tool without material alteration.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

1 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their report and the opportunity to respond. We address the single major comment below regarding verification of the recreation.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: The manuscript's core claim that the modern recreation enables effective contemporary use rests on the assumption that it faithfully reproduces the 1964 program's rules and output behavior, yet the provided description supplies no verification such as sample input-output pairs, rule mappings, or comparisons to the original dissertation. This is load-bearing for the assertion that the three compositions utilize the historical tool without material alteration.

    Authors: We agree that the manuscript as submitted does not contain explicit verification of fidelity such as sample input-output pairs, detailed rule mappings, or side-by-side comparisons with the 1964 dissertation. This is a valid observation. In the revised version we will add a dedicated subsection under the recreation description that (1) lists the original rules extracted from Padberg’s dissertation with corresponding code references, (2) provides concrete sample input texts together with the exact melodic and rhythmic outputs they produce, and (3) includes a short comparison of generated material against the expectations stated in the dissertation. These additions will directly support the claim that the three new compositions employ the historical rules without material alteration. The open-source repository will be updated with inline comments linking each rule to its dissertation source. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity identified

full rationale

The paper is a descriptive historical and artistic project documenting the recreation of a 1964 program and its use in three new compositions. It contains no mathematical derivations, predictions, fitted parameters, equations, or self-referential claims. The central claim is presentational (open-source recreation plus artistic repurposing) and does not rely on any of the enumerated circularity patterns such as self-definitional steps, fitted inputs called predictions, or load-bearing self-citations. The faithfulness of the recreation is asserted via implementation description rather than any internal reduction to inputs.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 0 invented entities

The paper contains no mathematical model, no fitted parameters, no unproved background axioms beyond ordinary historical facts, and no invented entities. It is a software recreation and artistic demonstration project.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5757 in / 1114 out tokens · 23139 ms · 2026-05-24T23:38:57.909546+00:00 · methodology

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Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

17 extracted references · 17 canonical work pages · 1 internal anchor

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    This work stood out at the time for using a text-to-music mapping instead of the random number generation based systems used in her contemporaries’ pieces, e.g

    INTRODUCTION In 1964, Harriet Padberg completed the first dissertation on algorithmic composition using a computer, Computer Com- posed Canon and Free Fugue , which converted text inputs into melodies using a custom algorithm. This work stood out at the time for using a text-to-music mapping instead of the random number generation based systems used in her...

    work page 1964

  2. [2]

    and mention in a 1970 survey of computer-generated mu- sic by Lejaren Hiller [7]. However, in the present, her work has largely been forgotten; it is not commonly known, nor spoken about outside of select papers, and a single recre- ation of the fugue according to the score tables and code included in the dissertation was published accompanying Computer M...

    work page 1970

  3. [3]

    Learning from History: Recreating and Repurposing Sister Harriet Padberg's Computer Composed Canon and Free Fugue

    ORIGINAL WORK 2.1 Background Harriet Padberg (November 13, 1922 - January 2, 2014) spent her life as a member of the ministry of a Roman 1https://www.python.org/, last accessed: 19th Apr 2019 arXiv:1907.04470v1 [cs.MM] 10 Jul 2019 Catholic women’s congregation titled the Society of the Sa- cred Heart. She received a PhD in mathematics and music from Saint...

    work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv 1922

  4. [4]

    PyPadberg

    PYPADBERG PyPadberg2 is an open-source recreation and interpreta- tion of Padberg’s dissertation written in Python. The pro- gram contains modules for parsing text, mapping frequen- cies and calculating rhythms as well as synthesizing resul- tant melodies. PyPadberg contains a full screen ASCII in- terface which runs in terminal. The remainder of this sec...

    work page 2019

  5. [5]

    Harriet Padberg

    PADBERG REPURPOSED Here we describe three compositions created using PyPad- berg that demonstrate approaches to adapting a historical work for new contexts. Not Even One , submitted by Molly Jones, is an example of repurposing the historical and so- cial context of the work by using the recreated composi- tion program in a piece of music about the represe...

    work page 2019

  6. [6]

    PyPadberg has been open sourced both to bring this algorithm into the present dialog on music technology his- tory and for modern composers to use

    CONCLUSION In this work, we discussed the obscure yet historically signif- icant Harriet Padberg and her 1964 PhD dissertation Com- puter Composed Canon and Free Fugue , and presented our own recreation or reinterpretation of her algorithm, PyPad- berg. PyPadberg has been open sourced both to bring this algorithm into the present dialog on music technolog...

    work page 1964

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    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Jason Freeman for providing the impetus for development and guidance during the development of PyPadberg

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    Harriet padberg, rscj | https://rscj.org/about/memoriam/harriet-padberg- rscj

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