Math Education Seminar: Computerized Folk Music in 1960s Hungary

Event details Date: Monday, October 26, 2026 Time: 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 265 - 3620 South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089 Type: Lecture / Talk / Workshop Campus: University Park Campus Department: Mathematics About this event Mate Szabo, USC Title: Computerized Folk Music in 1960s Hungary Abstract: One of the early non-numerical, experimental uses of digital computers was to generate music. In this talk I explore a somewhat unusual case and its aftermath from 1960s Hungary. Miklós Havass, one of Hungary’s earliest computer science graduates, defended his thesis on “Musical Composition with Electronic Calculators” in 1963. While the country’s contemporary music scene was lacking, it had a strong tradition in folk music education due to the strenuous efforts of composers and ethnomusicologists Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. This led Havass to use one of the first computers in Hungary to compose “epigone” folk songs based on Kodály’s easily available sheet music booklets. The project not only achieved public notice, but caught the attention of the elderly Kodály himself, who invited Havass to participate in his Folk Music Research Group. At the time the Group was preparing catalogues to include all Hungarian folk songs. The organization of the vast amount of melodies in a way that enabled easy search in the collection, finding similar melodies (for example for historical or cross-cultural comparisons), and analysis were all quite challenging. Kodály called for Havass’ help in computerizing the process. The first technological achievements of the Group were presented and demonstrated at the annual conference of the International Folk Music Council in 1964. Sadly, this early attempt at computational ethnomusicology ended relatively soon. The computers were not yet ready to process such a large amount of information, Havass was offered a demanding software developer position and had to leave the research group a couple years later, and the dynamic leader of the group, Kodály, died in 1967. Ethnomusicology also took an anthropological turn in the 1970s, which made the field less perceptive to such attempts for the coming decades. Official event details: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/math-education-seminar-computerized-folk-music-in-1960s-hungary