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American

1924 —1994

Lejaren Arthur Hiller Jr. was a computer music pioneer who helped shape the field of computer-generated composition, most notably through his work on the Illiac Suite, one of the first major pieces created with computer assistance. His innovations in programming, composition, and electronic music laid important groundwork for how technology could expand creative possibilities in sound.

Full Bio

Lejaren Arthur Hiller Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City and raised in a household where music and image were deeply intertwined. His father, Lejaren Hiller Sr., was a well-known illustrator and art photographer who specialized in elaborate historical scenes. Hiller studied piano, clarinet, saxophone, oboe, harmony, and composition from a young age and began experimenting early with altering piano rolls. He went on to attend Princeton University, where he earned a PhD in chemistry while also studying composition with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions.

Hiller was a computer music pioneer who brought a scientific mindset to music composition. In the mid-1950s at the University of Illinois, he and Leonard Isaacson programmed the Illiac computer with musical rules to see what kind of music a machine could create. This experiment produced the Illiac Suite for string quartet, one of the first serious compositions made with computer assistance. Hiller adapted programming methods from his chemistry background to shape musical counterpoint and structure, treating the computer as a creative partner rather than just a tool.

Beyond that breakthrough, Hiller was a builder and thinker. He co-developed MUSICOMP, one of the first music programming languages, which led to pieces like the Computer Cantata. He founded the Experimental Music Studio at Illinois, one of the earliest hubs for electronic and computer music in the US. Later, at SUNY Buffalo, he continued combining technology, theory, and composition.

Over his career, Hiller wrote three books—including the groundbreaking Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer, co-authored with mathematician Leonard Isaacson, which detailed their pioneering work using the ILLIAC computer to compose music. The book explores the Illiac Suite and the methods behind its four movements, covering compositional rules, rhythms, dynamics, and probabilistic models like Markov chains. Alongside this, Hiller published over 80 articles on topics ranging from music and electronics to information theory and chemistry. He showed the possibilities of computer-assisted creativity at a time when few believed it was possible. Hiller passed away in 1994.