Xref: utzoo comp.music:177 rec.music.classical:9127 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.music,rec.music.classical Subject: Re: Computer research in Schenkerian analysis Message-ID: <10190@venera.isi.edu> Date: 19 Oct 89 00:25:16 GMT References: <5013@orca.WV.TEK.COM> <1325@accuvax.nwu.edu> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 60 In article <1325@accuvax.nwu.edu> sandell@ferret (Greg Sandell) writes: >In article <5013@orca.WV.TEK.COM> steveb@eve.WV.TEK.COM () writes: >>I have long been contemplating writing software that can analyze tonal music >>via Schenker techniques. Every time I attempt to scope out the problem I >>seem >>to increase in complexity by an order of magnitude. I am looking for folks >>who >>have attempted to tackle this problem. > >Stephen Smoliar, no stranger to the net (esp. rec.music.classical) has an >article titled "A computer aid for Schenkerian analysis," COMPUTER MUSIC >JOURNAL 4/2, 41-59. Another item is by James >Snell (1979), "Design for a formal system for deriving tonal music," >but you will find it practically impossible to find since it is a >Master's thesis (State University of New York at Binghamton). > First of all, I would like to thank Greg for cross-posting this to rec.music.classical, thus allowing me to get in on this discussion. Secondly, I should point out that the "computer aid" discussed in the aforementioned article is basically a structure editor (as was observed by Jim Meehan in HIS article in that same issue of COMPUTER MUSIC JOURNAL). Thus, it does not offer very much as far as automating the process of analysis. Rather, it provides a consistent structural foundation for what those graphs are REALLY trying to say (i.e. a hierarchy of elaborations). Thus, it is an aid for someone who has already conceived of the analysis and wishes to make sure it is expressed consistently. My first step away from this direction is recorded in the Report of the Twelfth Congress of the International Musicological Society, in which I had to respond to a paper by Michael Kassler. At that point I was beginning to realize that there was more to music than any sort of "parse tree" representation such as could be offered by Schenker graphs. I felt that music analysis had to follow the lead of natural language processing and start looking for ways to represent semantics (whatever that might mean) as well as syntax (i.e. well-formedness). This was the beginning of my migration towards issues of memory, such as those I am now trying to develop. It should be relatively apparent that I am not really a member of the Schenker camp. Thus, I reject this whole idea of "correctness" which Greg cited. I believe that the Schenker notation is a good step towards documenting a particular performance of a composition (to the extent that it distinguishes structural from auxiliary notes). However, I feel strongly that there may be two quite different interpretations which are equally "correct." Thus, if you want a computer to do its own analysis, it is worth asking why you wish to undertake the task. One reason might be for the machine to advice you on how to play it. However, it is unlikely that a machine will ever give you a "definitive" analysis of a composition, since it is unclear that such an analysis exists. ========================================================================= USPS: Stephen Smoliar USC Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695 Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu "For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution--and it is always wrong."--H. L. Mencken