| Computer-assisted music analysis, which emerged almost 50 years ago, provides analytical tools that help solve problems, some of which may be unsolvable without the assistance of the computer. Unfortunately, most research in the area of computer-assisted music analysis has been carried out, again and again, without any explicit review of preceding attempts and accomplishments. Even the most recent research bears traces of two fundamental flaws that have plagued most research carried out to date: there is no classification of analytical methods within a comprehensive historical framework, and there is no critical evaluation of those methods.; This dissertation is an attempt to solve the problems related to these two flaws. Chapters 1 and 2 lays out a historical framework for computer-assisted music analysis, showing how it has been related to the development of computer technique and information theory, and how it has been applied to aesthetics. The source materials for these chapters consist of about 1,700 published and unpublished writings, including dissertations and internal research papers from many countries, that were collected and analyzed over the past several years.; Chapter 3 presents, within this historical framework, a general system of classification for computer-assisted music analysis. It gives specific characteristics of each classified category of analysis, showing the components and strategies of the methods, as well as developmental trends within the category.; All three of these chapters (1, 2, 3) that present the history and classification of computer-assisted music analysis draw not only on music theory and music history, but also consider related developments in linguistics, computer science, aesthetics, psychology, and artificial intelligence.; Chapter 4 presents a computer program MUSANA that has been developed by the author and the German physicist Dirk Uhrlandt for the analysis of music, as well as for the simulation and evaluation of music-analytical methods. The chapter presents the results created by using the program to evaluate the premises of a few of the analytical methods described in chapters 2 and 3, and shows how the program revealed limitations of some of the analytical methods. It also shows, in one case, how to formulate a new, more successful method. Still, overall, the chapter shows that the most important contribution of the program is the way it enables reflection on the methods used and the awareness it engenders of how those methods effect the outcome and the goal of the analysis.; Finally, the dissertation (chapter 5) suggests new kinds of evaluation and new methodologies that could be fruitfully employed in the area of computer-assisted music analysis in the future. An extensive bibliography is provided, comprising the 1,700 published and unpublished writings on computer-assisted music analysis, collected as source material for the dissertation. |
