Hiller, Lejaren (1924-1994) | University of Illinois Archives

Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994) was a chemist, composer, and music technologist. Born in New York City, Hiller learned to play piano, oboe, saxophone, and clarinet at a young age. His father was a noted illustrator and photographer. He was admitted into Princeton University in 1941. Here he earned a B.A. (1945), M.A. (1946), and Ph.D. (1947) all in chemistry. While at Princeton, Hiller also took lessons in music composition with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. After completing his dissertation, he spent five years as a research chemist for DuPont in Waynesboro, VA. During that time, he developed a method for dyeing orlon, acrylic fibers, which were created and trademarked by DuPont.

In 1952, he was hired in the Chemistry Department at the University of Illinois. While on faculty, Hiller obtained a Master of Music degree in composition. During this time, he also began working with the ILLIAC I, one of the earliest publicly funded super computers. In 1956, he collaborated with Leonard Isaacson to compose the Illiac Suite String Quartet No. 4, a four-movement composition and the first piece of music to be composed using a computer. Two years later, he transferred to the School of Music, where he founded the Experimental Music Studio (EMS). Isaacson and Hiller continued to collaborate, publishing Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer in 1959.

In 1967, Hiller arranged for John Cage to be appointed as an Associate Member of the Center for Advanced Study at Illinois. Hiller assisted Cage during his work on the ILLIAC II, which was used to compose HPSCHD. Despite working with many important composers and electronic engineers during his time leading the EMS, Hiller was not accepted by many of his colleagues at the School of Music and he left in 1968. HPSCHD premiered the following year on May 16, 1969.

Hiller joined the faculty at the University of Buffalo in 1968. Like the University of Illinois, Buffalo fostered a vibrant experimental music scene with Lukas Foss's Evenings for New Music concert series being founded in 1964. Hiller was hired to serve as the Co-Director of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, which sponsored the concert series. He would contribute in this role until 1974. Hiller retired in 1989 and died in New York on January 26, 1994.

Tiffany Funk, "A Musical Suite Composed by an Electronic Brain: Reexamining the Illiac Suite and the Legacy of Lejaren A. Hiller Jr." Leonardo Music Journal, 28 (2018): 19-24.

Renee Levine Packer, This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).