Q2816@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Creative Business Decisions) (10/20/89)
I have forwarded our net.correspondence re: Schenker and computers
to my friend Michael J. Schiano, a doctoral student in music theory
at Brandeis. He's done some work with computers to aid analysis,
and knows his Schenker as well. He responds:
I think computer generation (background to foreground) using
the Schenkerian rules is a neat thing: I think it can tell
a lot STATISTICALLY as to what's possible or probable or
problematic or whatever.
I don't think Schenkerianism is a reductive thing at all.
Schenker goes back to fore; we are actually reconstructing
a back-to-fore derivation by doing that derivation backwards
(which we call reduction.)
So, if the steps from back to fore are: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, say,
then when we do Schenker (and when Schenker did Schenker), it's:
OK, we have 10. How can we get there? Ah, 9!
So, now we have 9-10.
Now how can we get THERE?
Oh look! 7!
Yea. 7-8-9-10.
I don't think Schenker reduction is 10-9-8-7...
and I think a computer algorhythm that does that is of course
going to be troublesome since it would really have to do
10
then guess what's before that:
8 50 98 56 2000 1 9..............ah 9!
9-10
etc.
Later, Michael
MSCHIANO@BRANDEIS.BITNET
Roger Lustig (Q2816@PUCC.BITNET Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu)
Disclaimer: "That is not my dog."