Composer-in-Residence, John Chowning
Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of Music, Emeritus
Stanford University

John M. Chowning was born in Salem, New Jersey. Following military and university studies, he studied composition in Paris for three years with Nadia Boulanger. With the help of Max Mathews of Bell Telephone Laboratories and David Poole of Stanford, he set up a computer music program using the computer system of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1964. His initial research led to the first generalized sound localization algorithm implemented in a quad format in 1966. The same year he received the doctorate in composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Leland Smith who then joined Chowning in the computer music research. In 1967, Chowning discovered and developed an algorithm for generating complex sounds using frequency modulation (FM). This breakthrough in the synthesis of timbres allowed a very simple yet elegant way of creating and controlling time-varying spectra. Inspired by the acoustic and perceptual research of Jean-Claude Risset in the domain of timbre, he worked toward turning this discovery into a system of musical importance, using it extensively in his compositions. In 1973 Stanford University licensed the FM synthesis patent to Yamaha in Japan, leading to the most successful family of synthesizers in the history of electronic musical instruments.

John Chowning has received fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and was artist-in-residence with the Kunstlerprogramm des Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdiensts for the City of Berlin in 1974, and guest artist in IRCAM, Paris in 1978, in 1981, and in 1985. His compositions have been recorded on compact disc, WERGO 2012-50. In 1983 he was honored for his contributions to the field of computer music at the International Computer Music Conference in Rochester, New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988. He was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Music by Wittenberg University in 1990. In 1992 he was given The Osgood Hooker Professorship of Fine Arts by the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. The French Ministre de la Culture awarded him the Diplôme d'Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1995 and he was given the Doctorat Honoris Causa December 2002 by the Université de la Méditerranée in Marseille. Chowning taught computer-sound synthesis and composition at Stanford University's Department of Music and was founder and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), which continues to be one of the leading centers for computer music and related research.

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