Desain, P. (1990). Lisp as a second language: functional aspects. Perspectives of New Music, 28(1), 192-222.

Abstract

It took a long time for the computer music community to accept LISP as a suitable language for expressing their problems, and solutions. LISP was designed as early as 1960 by McCarthy. It has been the prominent language for symbolic programming in research fields like Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence ever since. What are the reasons that LISP has been neglected so long in computer music, a domain where the need for symbolic computation is so obvious, especially in composition? Perhaps the mainstream of computer music research has been sound generation, which doesn't involve many non-numerical applications. In this field even present day technology is hardly fast enough, so it is only natural to reject the extra layer of a high level language in favor of more efficient low-level ones. But nowadays there is a renewed interest in computer music composition, interactive composition systems, user interfaces for programming synthesizers and the use of AI techniques in computer music. Fundamental music research also uses algorithmic models. In all of these fields symbolic computation is pervasive and the use of languages like FORTRAN or C is absurd. For the people entering the field of LISP programming from a background of these languages, the transition process will be painful. This is not the result of all the parentheses in LISP, but because it is difficult to come to grip with a whole new style of programming (thus also a new way of thinking) and to unlearn the old stereotypical solutions. Looking at the LISP programs emerging from the computer music community, the imperative style can often be seen between the lines of LISP code. It is a pity to neglect the elegant ways of expressing algorithms in LISP, and doing so will often result in disappointing performance and maintainability. In this article I will focus on some LISP that cannot be found in the 'old' languages and illustrate them with examples from computer music.

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