Identifying Contrapuntal Modules in Palestrina's MassesFrauke
Jurgensen
University of Aberdeen, United KingdomIan Knopke
Music Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
BACKGROUND IN MUSIC HISTORY AND THEORYTechniques of melodic
repetition in Renaissance counterpoint often result in short
vertical combinations of melodic segments, called modules, that are
themselves repeated. These modules have been investigated recently
in several important research projects. For example, Owens draws on
manuscript evidence to show that composers worked with modules as
part of their compositional process. Schubert shows that the types
of modules identifiedby the sixteenth-century theorist Cerone
appear in the motets of Palestrina's 1563 collection. Collins Judd
relates contrapuntal techniques to structure in the works of
Josquin, and Milsom finds repeated contrapuntal combinations in
Josquin's motets for five or more voices. Lessoil-Daelman studies
the use of new and borrowed modules in parody Masses by Palestrina,
Lassus, and De Monte. The problem with traditional analysis-by-hand
as used by these researchers is that it takes a lot of time, making
it hard to arrive at convincing statistics to support hypotheses
about form across whole repertories of music.
BACKGROUND IN MUSIC INFORMATICSWhile most MIR research has been
focused directly on digital audio recordings, the recent appearance
of large databases of music in symbolic form, derived directly from
musical scores, have made it possible to approach traditional music
theory questions in a new way. This also raises various technical
challenges, such as how to locate many similar (but not necessarily
identical) musical fragments across large music sets. Many of the
problems are similar to those found in the string matching problems
used in biological sequencing applications.
AIMSRepeated contrapuntal combinations (modules) arise from the
interaction of rules of counterpoint and melodic repetition. Recent
research has hypothesized that composers made deliberate use of
such modules, and that these often formed the underlying framework
for organizing larger musical works. Our goal with this project has
been to investigate a number of musicological questions that arise
from this, including: how do modules contribute to the structure of
a piece as a whole? How do the restrictions imposed by writing
counterpoint against a pre-existent melody affect the writing
style? Are particular patterns of repetition more used at
beginnings, middles, or ends of pieces? How do modules behave in
pieces with different numbers of voices? Many of Palestrina's
Masses are Parody Masses. What happens to the contrapuntal
combinations of a motet when the motet is quoted in a Parody
Mass?
MAIN CONTRIBUTIONThe musical material we have been working with
to answer these questions is the entire corpus of Palestrina's 104
Masses, made available in Humdrum format by Bret Aarden in 2004.
The database is based on John Miller's 1992 electronic edition,
based in turn on the Casimiri edition of Palestrina's works.
Palestrina's music follows rigorously-applied rules of composition
and is the largest, most consistent body of renaissance
counterpoint that is easily accessible to us. Because of the large
amount of music involved, we have taken a computational approach to
investigating these questions, constructing musically-informed
algorithms to locate ornamented modules across the entire corpus,
and to do it within a reasonable amount of time.Automated ted
detection of modules by computer poses several difficult problems.
First, the modules can undergo transpositions and contrapuntal
transformations as they are repeated, may be concealed with
ornaments, or truncated. Pattern-matching algorithms specifically
tailored to contrapuntal variation needed to be developed. Second,
a system to generate potential modules, encode these patterns into
a symbolic form suitable for computer-based queries, and search for
them in several pieces becomes impossibly unwiedly when applied to
a corpus this large (over a million notes). Our methodology is
based on the use of a musically-
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adapted suffix array system, in combination with a set of
database techniques. Within the entire set of 104 masses, we have
identified groupings of recurring modules that appear to serve as
structural elements within each mass.This work is a continuation of
research previously presented at CIM04 and CIM05.
IMPLICATIONSThe structures we identify are one piece of the
puzzle that is compositional practice and style development. For
the first time, we are able to study the interaction of
counterpoint and form through the detailed analysis of hundreds of
complete pieces by Palestrina and other major composers. Patterns
of module repetition can be compared to models of parody Masses and
the works of other composers, as well as the patterns found by
other scholars, such as Cumming and Schubert. The method developed
for this project can then be applied to other repertories,
contributing to our understanding of the structural processes of
the whole period. We are also working to improve our visual display
of the formal elements of these masses, taking the work of
Lessoil-Daelman as an example, so that we can better summarise
formal elements across the entire set of pieces. An encoding
project of the Masses of Lassus and others is already in
progress.
REFERENCESAssayag, G., Dubnov, S., Delerue, O. "Guessing the
Composer's Mind: Applying Universal Prediction to Musical Style".
Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, pp.
496-9, 1999.R. Durbin, S. Eddy, A. Krogh, and G. Mitchison.
Biological Sequence Analysis : Probabilistic Models of Proteins and
Nucleic Acids. Cambridge University Press, 1998.D. Gusfield.
Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences. Cambridge University
Press, 1997.J. A. Owens. Composers at Work. Oxford University
Press, 1997.P. Schubert. "Mode and Counterpoint," in Music Theory
and the Exploration of the Past. Ed. C. Bernstein and D. W. Hatch.
University of Chicago Press, 1994.M. Lessoil-Daelman. Une approche
synoptique des motifs et des modules dans la messe parodique. PhD
dissertation, McGill University, 2002.C. Collins Judd. "Josquin des
Prez: Salve Regina," in Music before 1600, ed. Mark Everist.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.C. Collins Judd. "Musical Commonplace
Books, Writing Theory, and `Silent Listening': The Polyphonic
Examples of Glarean's Dodecachordon," Musical Quarterly 82, pp.
482--516, 1998.C. Collins Judd, ed. Tonal Structures in Early
Music. Garland Publishing, 1998.
Frauke JurgensenCurrent position: Lecturer in Music, Univerity
of Aberdeen, ScotlandMain field of research: MusicologyMain
research areas: Renaissance compositional practice, performance
practice, performanceRelevant qualifications: B. Hons. Mus. Theory
and Composition, University of Western Ontario, L. Mus.
Performance, McGill University, Ph.D. Musicology at McGill
University (2005)Recent work: using computers to study the
distribution of accidentals in the Buxheim Organ Book and its
concordances, post-doctoral fellowship with Jessie Ann Owens on
Palestrina. Talk at the Center for Computer-Assisted Research in
the Humanities at Stanford University.Contact:
[email protected]
Ian KnopkeCurrent Position: Research Associate, Music
Informatics, Indiana UniversityMain Field of Research: Music
Information Retrieval / Computer MusicRelevant Qualifications:
B.Mus Composition, M.A. Music Theory, University of Alberta; Ph.D.
Music Technology, McGill UniversityRecent Work: computational
musicology, algorithmic composition methods, location, indexing and
searching of music on the Internet, and signal processing and
synthesis of recorded audioContact: [email protected]
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