The Ohio State University’s Contemporary Music Festival, featuring the music of award-winning composers, faculty and students, kicks off today at 5 p.m. with a musicology lecture by John Harbison in the Seminar Room of the Music and Dance Library.Harbison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, will be featured throughout the festival.Don Gibson, the director of the festival, said Harbison was selected because his name will bring recognition to the program and because of the broad use of media to compose his music. “The festival is a good opportunity for students because it tends to incorporate the entire school of music,” Gibson said. “The broad use of media forces us to focus all of our efforts.”One of the most innovative of all of the media is the music by Marc Ainger, an assistant professor of music.Ainger said the piece that will be played was composed on a computer. It was recorded on a tape and will be played back during the first concert, tonight at 8 p.m.”All I can say is that it is computer generated music,” Ainger said. “It is hard to explain, you just have to listen to it.”Although this is a contemporary music festival, traditional historians of music are involved because they have recently decided to take a broader look at contemporary pieces, said Arved Ashby, a musicologist and professor of music.For the longest time people thought musicologists studied ancient music and that contemporary music should be the domain of the composition department, Ashby said. But they have recently begun to look at contemporary pieces because they are history as soon as they are composed.The last three years have brought first-rate performances to the festival, Gibson said. It is always an exciting, off-the-wall event that gives the campus community the best chance to experience a broad exposure to various types of contemporary music.The festival will feature concerts tonight, Thursday and Friday as well as one next week on Feb. 18. All performances will be held in Weigel Auditorium.In addition to the musicology lecture by Harbison, there will also be a convocation with him on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in Weigel Auditorium and a voice master class on Thursday, Feb. 19, at 2:30 p.m. in Weigel.All performances are free and open to the public.