Laurie Spiegel

Laurie Spiegel (born September 20, 1945) is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She is also a guitarist and lutenist. Spiegel’s musical interpretation of Johannes Kepler’s Harmonice Mundi appeared on “Sounds of Earth” section of the Voyager Golden Record. Her 1972 piece “Sediment” was included in the 2012 film The Hunger Games. She has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Education Spiegel was born on September 20, 1945, in Chicago. Her early musical experiences were largely self-directed, beginning with the mandolin, guitar, and banjo she had as a child, which she learned to play by ear. She became interested in electronics after using a tape-operated computer at Purdue University as part of a high school class field trip. At the age of 20, she taught herself Western music notation, after which she began writing down her compositions. Spiegel attended Shimer College in Naperville, Illinois, through the school’s early entrance program. She subsequently spent a year at the University of Oxford through an exch