Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

The Macintosh Man Who Made Music

Jef Raskin, the man who a) created the Macintosh computer as employee number 31 at Apple in the early 1980s (his version) or b) worked at Apple for Steve Jobs when the Macintosh was invented (Jobs' version) died of pancreatic cancer on Saturday. He was 61 and had played many roles in his relatively short life--mathematician, professor, bicycle racer, model airplane designer, and pioneer in the field of human-computer interactions. Of all his interests, none were enduring or important than music which he wrote and played with great enthusiasm throughout his life.

In a article called In Defense of Music Education on his web site, Raskin writes: "...if I had not studied music, there would be no Macintosh computers today.� The story is hardly a common one:

I had written a computer-music language, Lingua Musica pro Machinationibus -- I took Latin in high school, and tended to inflict it on the world -- and it became the starting point of DARMS, a music description language used worldwide to this day. One of the leaders of the project was Leonard Bernstein, who took the time to teach me the elements of conducting, critiqued my compositions, and even included me (in my capacity as fly-on-the-wall) in his discussions with his assistant conductors and first chair musicians on how he wanted various works performed and why. I got to use the latest computers and software at Columbia. It was all very heady for a 17-year-old and it provided another priceless education.

Before he reached the age of 20, Raskin was consultant and programmer for the Columbia-Princeton Computer Music Project. A few years later, he became an instructor in Electronic and Computer Music at Penn State and designed and built the Penn State Electronic Music Studio. He even did a stint as a touring percussionist with the San Diego Symphony. After he became rich and famous in the computer world, he served on the faculty of San Francisco Community Music Center.

Although his interest in music never diminished, he abandoned the academic side in 1969 after a frustrating stint as a student/lecturer at the University of California at San Diego:

I never did complete my Ph.D. in music. The breaking point came when after having had dozens of my compositions criticized almost out of existence (I had an unfortunate tendency to write music that most people enjoyed) I took some graph paper, a collection of colored pens, and a can of silver spray paint and made an artistic-looking "score" with the names of instruments and terms like "Andante," "pizzicato," "con molto tomatoes," and the like placed at random here and there. It was purely graphic, with only a few G, C, and F clefs at the beginning to hint that it was playable.

My professor loved it, and said to me, "If only you would write all your music with such intricacy and depth. Finally, you have more than one idea going at a time. And your juxtaposition of stasis and movement is superb!" He wasn't being sarcastic.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3/01/2005