Fingerprints, barcode sequences and quasi-phylogenies-Tools for analysing polyphonic music.

A data flow is presented for visualising the evolution of elementary structures of polyphonic music from early Baroque to late Romantic, using quasi-phylogenies based on fingerprint diagrams and barcode sequence data of 2-tuples of consecutive vertical pitch class sets (pcs). The present methodological study, which sees itself as a proof of concept for a data-driven approach, uses examples of music from the Baroque, the Viennese School and the Romantic era to show that such quasi-phylogenies can be generated from multi-track MIDI (v. 1) files that largely correspond to the eras and the chronology of compositions and composers. The method presented is considered to have the potential to support the analysis of a wide range of musicological questions. In the context of collaborative work on quasi-phylogenies of polyphonic music, a public data archive could be established that provides multi-track MIDI files with contextual data.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Rambold et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)