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From: mrsmith@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Mr. P. H. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.music,rec.music.classical
Subject: Categories of Musicological Analysis
Message-ID: <9931@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 16 Aug 90 18:31:25 GMT
Reply-To: mrsmith@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Mr. P. H. Smith)
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Organization: MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
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First, thanks to all who sent suggestions for where to look for
examples of the divisions of music.  They were all very helpful.

Now, my next question is What are the basic categories of musicological
analysis?  In other words, in what few basic categories can all
musico-analytic problems be understood?

Here is my first stab at the problem:

	1. Primary Sound (any sound or silence without rhythm, melody,
harmony, or lyrics, but with choate musical value)

	2. Rhythmics (the regularization of primary sound in
alternation with silence)

	3. Harmonics (musical reference to an articulated tonal field
such as a scale, the overtone series, etc.)

	4. Melodics (Logicial discursive overlays on 1, 2, and 3
above)

	5. Lyrics (Verbal and semantic overlay on 1, 2, or 3 above -
includes song texts, but not vocalises - maybe includes the Teacher in
Charlie Brown TV shows)

	6. Corpographics (the staging and visual presentation in alles
its aspects - i.e., is the music in a church, a stadium, in
headphones, etc.)

I think these six categories can serve to cover any and all problems
in musicological analysis in a meaningful way.  That is, they are not too
broad and they are logically related to one another.  But, of course
some of you will have better ideas about this.  And that is what I
think would be interesting to hear about.  So, please let me know what
you think of.  Thanks.

Paul Smith
mrsmith@ai.mit.edu