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Music Analysis
and
I. INTRODUCTION *1
the Computer
RAYMOND ERICKSON
understanding of the nature and limits of computer-aided schol-
arship by the former group; however, the situation is hardly
assuaged by members of the other camp who are often unwilling
to discuss their work in terms intelligible to the uninitiated.
The problem has been further aggravated by the fact (noted by
Harald Heckmann in his preface to one of the books discussed
below) that musicology was one of the last humanistic disci-
plines to recognize the potential usefulness of twentieth-century
technology. To be sure, significant forays into bibliographic
control and computer composition have been made in recent
years, but what is surely one of the most fertile and extensive
territories, that of musical analysis, still remains largely un-
explored. While it has been adequately demonstrated that a
computer can be programmed to count eighth-notes or deter-
Since the data must be not only valid in format but also correct
in content, one must always be resigned to the necessity of a
final comparison with the original source material before pro-
ceeding to the next stage.
Once the tables are compiled, the analysis proper can begin.
Let us say that in an examination of melody segments it is dis-
covered that melodies B and C incorporate the test pattern A
as a beginning and that D and E begin with melody segment C.
This can be done simply by comparing the intervallic succes-
sions calculated for each segment in the tables cited above. A
"tree" or "list" (whose elements might be names of, or point-
ers to, the specific melodic segments) can be created in the
course of this analysis to preserve these relationships for later
consideration. A diagrammatic representation of such a data-
structure might look like this:
a. Input routine
b. Abbreviation decoder
c. Symbol recognizer
d. Syntax routines
e. Output routine that creates intermediate table on tape
f. Error routine to be called when syntax routines find
an invalid symbol
TOTITL (arg)
makes a new composition (and also the first note of the top
part) current. The argument embodies a specific title name in
parentheses; if absent, the IML tape is moved to the next com-
position in sequence. *16
TONOTE [arg]
MOVE A, B
ADD A, B, C
V. CONCLUSION
R E F E R E N C E S
2 Gerald Lefkoff, ed. Computer Applications in Music. Papers from the West
Virginia University Conference on Computer Applications in Music (Morgantown,
West Virginia: West Vtrginia University Library, 1967), 105pp. For a critique
of the articles not discussed here, see Wayne Slawson's review of this volume in
the Journal of Music Theory 12(Spring 1968), 105-11.
5 One might profitably consider the implications of the dictum that "A computer
is a symbol manipulator, period". We often forget that mathematics is but one
form of symbol manipulation; those who would regard a computer as a kind of
super desk calculator have too simplistic a notion of the real nature of a com-
pute r.
6 Allen Forte (Lefkoff, pp. 31-2) distinguishes between "computer-aided" studies
("in which the role of the machine is not predominant") and "computer-imple-
mented" studies (in which the computer "does the largest part of the work for
the researcher"). I eschew this kind of distinction because it obscures the fun-
damental fact that the individual is always ultimately responsible for the results
no matter to what degree he relies on machines for assistance. Thus I feelthat
a quantitative distinction is really unnecessary and potentially misleading. How-
ever, when we arrive at that inevitable day when the computer tells us how to
proceed, a qualitative distinction and appropriate terminology will be in order.
Until then, "computer-aided" seems to be a reasonable description of the work
undertaken by many of us who use machines to implement and test ideas con-
ceived in our own minds.
10 Most encoding systems produce input data in the form of character strings; a
rare exception is the procedure adopted by Lefkoff (discussed below) to which
this example therefore does not apply.
11 For a fuller description of syntax definitions and analysis the reader is referred
to "Syntax-Directed Compiling", Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer
Conference, AFIPS, 25(1964), 31-57. The article is reprinted in Programming
Systems and Languages, Saul Rosen, ed. (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co.,
(1967), 264-97.
13 Allen Forte, "A Program for the Analytic Reading of Scores", Journal of Music
Theory 10(1966), 330-63.
14 Professor Forte never does define "event configuration", so my use of the term
is based on inference.
15 Michael Kassler has given his own description of MIR in "Toward Musical In-
formation Retrieval", Perspectives of New Music 4(Spring-Summer 1966), 59-
67.
16 Mr. Selleck, who kindly spent several hours going over the design of the IML-
MIR system with me, has rewritten much of the original coding of the MIR com-
piler and, in the course of doing so, has modified several commands. For ex-
ample, the argument for TOTITL now may be only an actual title name or null;
a new command, TOCOMP, is similar to TOTITL except that its argument is an
integer n specifying that the IML tape is to be moved to the beginning of the nth
composition. In the Robison version both names and integers were acceptable
arguments for TOTITL.
17 According to information received from Messrs. Regener and Selleck, both sys-
tems should be operational by the time this article is published. Aspects of IML-
MIR are already being used in conjunction with a project, directed by Professor
Lewis Lockwood, which seeks to establish a chronology of the works of Josquin
based on stylistic trends.
18 For an informal survey of firmware applications now and in the near future see
Ascher Opler, "Fourth-Generation Software", Datamation 13(January 1967) 22-
4.
SNOBOL3 Farber, D. J., Griswold, R. E., and Polonsky, I. P., "The SNOBOL3
Programming Language". Bell System Technical Journal45, 6(July-
August 1966), 895-944. The basic technical description of SNOBOL3.
SNOMAD Rosin, Robert F. "SNOMAD 2". Yale Computer Center Memo No.
14, New Haven, June 1967. Not a separate language, SNOMAD is a
set of defined operators and functions in the MAD language that allow
SNOBOL-like (i. e., string manipulation) operations within MAD pro-
grams. It is available at Yale and the University of Michigan. The
author of SNOMAD, R. F. Rosin, is a member of the Computer Science
Department at the Sate University of New York at Buffalo.