Charles Malcolm Dodge (born June 5, 1942 in Ames, Iowa) is an American composer best known for his electronic music, specifically his computer music. He is a former student of Darius Milhaud and Gunther Schuller.

Education and teaching career

Dodge received his undergraduate education (BA) at the University of Iowa in 1964, where he studied composition with Richard Hervig; he earned his MA (1966) and doctorate (DMA) (1970) at Columbia University where he studied with Jack Beeson, Chou Wen-chung, Otto Luening, and Vladimir Ussachevsky. He also studied computer music with Godfrey Winham at Princeton University in 1969-70. While at Columbia, Dodge was very active at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Dodge was one of the leading innovators in the emerging field of computer music composition (as opposed to analog electronic composition, the norm in the field through the 1970s). From 1970 to 1977 he taught at Columbia and subsequently founded the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM) (1977) at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York where he was Professor of Music. He also taught at the City University Graduate Center. During Dodge’s years as Professor of Composition and Director of the BC-CCM, Dodge not only had the BC-CCM designated as an official Center within Brooklyn College in 1978 but more importantly brought it to a world-class standing in the field of computer music. In the early 1990s Dodge left Brooklyn College for Dartmouth College. In May 2009 he retired from the position of Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, a post he held for 18 years. In addition to his work as a composer, Dodge is noted for co-authoring the highly praised book Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance, ISBN 0-02-864682-7 Best known in recent years as the owner, with his wife Katharine, of the Putney Mountain Winery in Putney, Vermont. The company has experienced growth every year since its founding in 1998.

Music

Dodge created many works in the field of computer music, including Earth’s Magnetic Field (1970), which mapped magnetic field data to musical sounds, Speech Songs, a 1974 work that used analysis and resynthesis of human voices, The Waves (voice and computer music), Profile, and Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental (1978), which combines live piano performance with a digitally-manipulated recording of Enrico Caruso singing the aria "Vesti la giubba."

Discography

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961-1973, New World Records, 1998. Computer Music, Nonesuch/Elektra 71245, 1970 Synthesized Voices, CRI SD 348, 1976. Electro Acoustic Music 1, Neuma, 1990. Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental, New Albion, 1994. The Composer in the Computer Age III, CDCM Series Volume 18, Centaur, 2006?.

Listening