Late breaking information

MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

07/02/2019

Modelling Melodic Patterns: Findings and Open Questions

Colloquium Musicology
Peter van Kranenburg, Meertens Instituut

Thursday 21 February 2019, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

From music theory it is widely accepted that music can be modelled hierarchically, score notation being just one level in that hierarchy. For example, for Western tonal music, theories such as the Generative Theory of Tonal Music (GTTM) or Heinrich Schenker's reduction methods are considered to result in valid analyses, revealing higher-level structures encompassing multiple individual notes, or even entire pieces. For the specific musical dimension of melody, no such well-established methodology exists. In this contribution, he will talk about a number of studies in which he uses computational methods to extract melodic patterns from monophonic music, both represented symbolically and as audio recordings. He will report some successes in detecting melodic cadences and relating melodic gestures in Jewish Torah recitation. Next, he will present some open questions, mainly on interpretation and evaluation of the findings of melodic pattern discovery algorithms.

Peter van Kranenburg is a researcher at the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam. As a musicologist, he is interested in how and why we make and experience music. As a computer scientist, he investigates how we can use computers to support research on music. He is continuously searching to connect humanities and scientific approaches; a very intriguing challenge. Van Kranenburg has developed a method to automatically recognize the personal style of certain classical composers. Moreover, he worked on analyzing melodies that are used to recite the Qur’an, and he developed a way to compute to what extent two melodies are similar.