Music's experiment with information theory

Abstract:
The thesis explores the interaction between information theory and music historically in order to investigate whether information theory might be regarded as a useful tool for contemporary musicologists.

These ideas are important in the current musicological climate, where the use of the computer in music study allows for complex informational analyses to be made. Appropriate computing power was unavailable in the 1950s when information theory was first applied to music, making this research problematic. Information theory later lost its significance in musicology when dominant theoretical and analytical paradigms (such as Schenkerism and pitch-class set theory) rendered early information-theoretical methodologies and results irrelevant to mainstream musicology. New paradigms in musicological research (such as, the new musicology, empirical musicology and performance analysis) do allow information-theoretical concepts to participate in musicological discourse.

Interactions between information theory and music are investigated within the context of the development of information theory and in the context of music study. Coons and Kraehenbuehl’s musical information theory (1958) is identified as a general and abstract theory of broad applicability which would form the foundation for a contemporary general theory of musical communication. In order to demonstrate its potential, an automated tool is developed with which to test the theory. It is used in the analysis of David Kraehenbuehl’s A Formal Triad (1958), which was composed to demonstrate fundamental concepts of his and Coons’ theory; illustrating it’s broad applicability to compositional as well as analytical problems, and a connection between structure and experience in terms of unity and variety.

Methods from recent computational studies into musical perception, as well as some recent musical theories, would contribute to the development of a general theory. It is suggested that a general theory might also be applicable to the study of musicological communication.

Link to pdf of thesis coming soon