Embedding algorithms in musical instruments: From automata to artificial intelligence-driven music

Abstract

This study explores the deep historical roots of algorithmic thinking in music, demonstrating that the design and embedding of algorithms into musical tools predate the eras of computers and artificial intelligence. Across examples ranging from ancient automata to nineteenth-century mechanical musical devices, artisans and musicians constructed mechanisms that embodied musical rules in physical form, thereby formalising processes of repetition, variation and autonomy. By revisiting these historical traditions and examining how past societies conceptualised musical machines, this study provides a historical perspective on recurring issues such as agency, authorship, autonomy and human–machine mediation. Methodologically, the study combines a media-archaeological analysis of historical automata with conceptual inquiry into instrument design, linking pre-digital ‘material algorithms’ to contemporary intelligent instruments. It examines how the physical embedding of algorithmic procedures has shaped perceptions of musical agency and authorship, while also considering how these historical cases can inform, rather than prescribe, discussions of contemporary AI- and data-driven instruments. In doing so, the study identifies selected continuities and discontinuities between historical musical automata and current algorithmic practices, offering a historically grounded framework for understanding intelligent instruments in the post-digital era.