Summary: Many real-world problems can be expressed as an instance of the constrained nonlinear optimization problem (CNOP). This problem has a set of constraints specifies the feasible solution space. In the last years several algorithms have been proposed and developed for tackling CNOP. In this paper, we present a cultural algorithm for constrained optimization, which is an adaptation of “Musical Composition Method” or MCM, which was proposed in R. Mora-Gutiérrez, [Art. Int. Rev. 1–15 (2012)]. We evaluated and analyzed the performance of MCM on five test cases benchmark of the CNOP. Numerical results were compared to evolutionary algorithm based on homomorphous mapping, Artificial Immune System and anti-culture population algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that MCM significantly improves the global performances of the other tested metaheuristics on same of benchmark functions.