James K. Randall

James K. Randall (June 16, 1929 – May 28, 2014) was an American composer, music theorist, and early adopter of electronic music. At the time of his death he was Professor of Music Emeritus at Princeton University.

James Kirtland Randall was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Margaret ("Miggie") Wright Randall and Edwin Templeton Randall. Miggie Randall was a violin teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music and brought young James up as a music prodigy, with the ambition that he would become a famous piano player. When James was 17, a piano sonata that he composed was played at Carnegie Hall by his teacher, Leonard Shure.

James went on to get a BA at Columbia University, an MA at Harvard University and an MFA at Princeton (studying with Milton Babbitt.) He also taught for four years at the US Navy School of Music while on active duty. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1957.

At Princeton, he became a pioneer in electronic music, working from the very early days of punch cards. Music from that time includes Lyric Variations for Violin and Computer, Quartets in Pairs, and Quartersines.

Later, he did a great deal of free-wheeling improvisation, then late in life came back to composing for piano (the GAP series) and MIDI (a garland of Midi, My Prayer for Bella).

Though Randall's music was mostly heard within the small world of academic music, it occasionally reached a wider audience, for instance on the radio show "Schickele Mix":

He also wrote about music, published at first in Perspectives of New Music. Many of his writings took the form of highly experimental prose poems. A typical footnote from Compose Yourself -- A Manual for the Young (1972) reads:

1.) (pfung! ; !pfung(

The publication of Compose Yourself caused a major financial backer to remove his support from Perspectives of New Music. While J.K. Randall's early works were set in conventional type, in his later writings he often used his own calligraphy.

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