Haydn Seek

Composers & Computers

In this episode, Stanley Jordan does something remarkable: He recreates a lost computer music composition, and premieres it here for the first time.

Part Pac-Man, part symphony orchestra, this three-minute piece is a testament to Jordan's early musical journey through technical terrain, setting the stage for a career in which he has used technology to create dazzling ear candy.

“Haydn Seek was a composition I made in 1980 while I was studying computer music at Princeton,” Jordan wrote. “It was spawned from an assignment in a composition class with J.K. Randall, in which we were to take an existing piece of music and compose a new one using something that we liked in the original.”

Jordan based his composition on “Piano Sonata in A Major” by Franz Joseph Haydn. He was also studying computer music with Paul Lansky during this period, so he decided to make his composition for computer.

“This was an exciting time because computers were just beginning to be used as musical instruments. At that time computer music was only available at academic institutions and most of the music was very abstract. I loved that stuff, but I was more interested in bringing something new to traditional forms,” such as "Switched on Bach,” he said.

Jordan loved how Haydn got so much material out of a few simple patterns. In “Haydn Seek,” he takes Haydn's original themes from the first movement, and expands on them in his own way, using more contemporary harmonies. At the beginning, everything is a condensation of Haydn's main themes, taken exactly as Haydn composed them.

But then he starts blending in his own new material, growing and expanding until the piece is completely his own, but still related to Haydn's original main theme.

The original version of Haydn Seek was incomplete and the materials were lost, so he recreated it here from memory, completing it using only compositional techniques and harmonic knowledge that he had at the time.