Project: Visualizing consonance and dissonance in modal counterpoint
Description
The concepts of consonance and dissonance correspond roughly to the combinations of musical notes that are perceived by most to be pleasant and unpleasant, respectively. These concepts are some of the main cogs and gears available to composers for the purpose of introducing emotional
tension into a piece of music. They are especially relevant in modal music, which roughly corresponds to the music of the renaissance and early baroque period and earlier. These types of music will then be the focus of the paper.
It is possible to extract information on consonance and dissonance from traditional sheet music, or staff notation. However, to do this one must be able to read sheet music. Even then, plucking out the relevant tidbits is not very efficient. The main goal is then to provide this information in a more accessible manner. Additionally, the information should be presented in such a way that it is mentally parsable in a much more efficient way than extracting the same information from traditional notation.
A piece of software called the ”Counterpoint Analyzer” is created which accomplishes the aforementioned goals using several visualizations, each attuned to a different type of audience, including laymen, musicians and musicologists. Since each audience type has distinctly different demands, each visualization has some special features not found in the others.
Details
- Student
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JRJan-Pieter Rooij
- Supervisor
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Huub van de Wetering
- Link
- Thesis