Relations between Melody and Rhythm on Music Analysis: Representations and Algorithms for Symbolic Musical Data

What triggers the analysis of a musical piece is essentially a pragmatic impulse: that is working something out on its own terms rather than on the terms of something else.Musical analysis focuses on a certain musical structure (that may be represented by a phrase or by an entire composition), aiming at defining its constituents and explaining the way they operate. The basic procedure of musical analysis is the comparison: it is through collation that it defines the structural elements and reveals the functions.This lecture presents a model of analysis that is capable of progressively exploring the symbolic level of the musical text, identifying its melodic and rhythmic cells on the basis of the information that every single one of them carries as well as the relationships existing among them.