CIM08 Abstract Proceedings, Thessaloniki, 3-6 July 2008

Identifying Contrapuntal Modules in Palestrina's Masses

Frauke Jurgensen
University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Ian Knopke
Music Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
BACKGROUND IN MUSIC HISTORY AND THEORY
Techniques of melodic repetition in Renaissance counterpoint often result in short vertical
combinations of melodic segments, called modules, that are themselves repeated. These
modules have been investigated recently in several important research projects. For example,
Owens draws on manuscript evidence to show that composers worked with modules as part of
their compositional process. Schubert shows that the types of modules identified
by the sixteenth-century theorist Cerone appear in the motets of Palestrina's 1563 collection.
Collins Judd relates contrapuntal techniques to structure in the works of Josquin, and Milsom
finds repeated contrapuntal combinations in Josquin's motets for five or more voices. LessoilDaelman studies the use of new and borrowed modules in parody Masses by Palestrina,
Lassus, and De Monte. The problem with traditional analysis-by-hand as used by these
researchers is that it takes a lot of time, making it hard to arrive at convincing statistics to
support hypotheses about form across whole repertories of music.
BACKGROUND IN MUSIC INFORMATICS
While most MIR research has been focused directly on digital audio recordings, the recent
appearance of large databases of music in symbolic form, derived directly from musical scores,
have made it possible to approach traditional music theory questions in a new way. This also
raises various technical challenges, such as how to locate many similar (but not necessarily
identical) musical fragments across large music sets. Many of the problems are similar to those
found in the string matching problems used in biological sequencing applications.
AIMS
Repeated contrapuntal combinations (modules) arise from the interaction of rules of
counterpoint and melodic repetition. Recent research has hypothesized that composers made
deliberate use of such modules, and that these often formed the underlying framework for
organizing larger musical works. Our goal with this project has been to investigate a number of
musicological questions that arise from this, including: how do modules contribute to the
structure of a piece as a whole? How do the restrictions imposed by writing counterpoint against
a pre-existent melody affect the writing style? Are particular patterns of repetition more used at
beginnings, middles, or ends of pieces? How do modules behave in pieces with different
numbers of voices? Many of Palestrina's Masses are Parody Masses. What happens to the
contrapuntal combinations of a motet when the motet is quoted in a Parody Mass?
MAIN CONTRIBUTION
The musical material we have been working with to answer these questions is the entire corpus
of Palestrina's 104 Masses, made available in Humdrum format by Bret Aarden in 2004. The
database is based on John Miller's 1992 electronic edition, based in turn on the Casimiri edition
of Palestrina's works. Palestrina's music follows rigorously-applied rules of composition and is
the largest, most consistent body of renaissance counterpoint that is easily accessible to us.
Because of the large amount of music involved, we have taken a computational approach to
investigating these questions, constructing musically-informed algorithms to locate ornamented
modules across the entire corpus, and to do it within a reasonable amount of time.
Automated ted detection of modules by computer poses several difficult problems. First, the
modules can undergo transpositions and contrapuntal transformations as they are repeated,
may be concealed with ornaments, or truncated. Pattern-matching algorithms specifically
tailored to contrapuntal variation needed to be developed. Second, a system to generate
potential modules, encode these patterns into a symbolic form suitable for computer-based
queries, and search for them in several pieces becomes impossibly unwiedly when applied to a
corpus this large (over a million notes). Our methodology is based on the use of a musically86

CIM08 Abstract Proceedings, Thessaloniki, 3-6 July 2008

adapted suffix array system, in combination with a set of database techniques. Within the entire
set of 104 masses, we have identified groupings of recurring modules that appear to serve as
structural elements within each mass.
This work is a continuation of research previously presented at CIM04 and CIM05.
IMPLICATIONS
The structures we identify are one piece of the puzzle that is compositional practice and style
development. For the first time, we are able to study the interaction of counterpoint and form
through the detailed analysis of hundreds of complete pieces by Palestrina and other major
composers. Patterns of module repetition can be compared to models of parody Masses and
the works of other composers, as well as the patterns found by other scholars, such as
Cumming and Schubert. The method developed for this project can then be applied to other
repertories, contributing to our understanding of the structural processes of the whole period.
We are also working to improve our visual display of the formal elements of these masses,
taking the work of Lessoil-Daelman as an example, so that we can better summarise formal
elements across the entire set of pieces. An encoding project of the Masses of Lassus and
others is already in progress.
REFERENCES
Assayag, G., Dubnov, S., Delerue, O. "Guessing the Composer's Mind: Applying Universal
Prediction to Musical Style". Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, pp.
496-9, 1999.
R. Durbin, S. Eddy, A. Krogh, and G. Mitchison. Biological Sequence Analysis : Probabilistic
Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
D. Gusfield. Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
J. A. Owens. Composers at Work. Oxford University Press, 1997.
P. Schubert. "Mode and Counterpoint," in Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past. Ed. C.
Bernstein and D. W. Hatch. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
M. Lessoil-Daelman. Une approche synoptique des motifs et des modules dans la messe
parodique. PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2002.
C. Collins Judd. "Josquin des Prez: Salve Regina," in Music before 1600, ed. Mark Everist.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
C. Collins Judd. "Musical Commonplace Books, Writing Theory, and `Silent Listening': The
Polyphonic Examples of Glarean's Dodecachordon," Musical Quarterly 82, pp. 482--516, 1998.
C. Collins Judd, ed. Tonal Structures in Early Music. Garland Publishing, 1998.
Frauke Jurgensen
Current position:
Main field of research:
Main research areas:
Relevant qualifications:
Recent work:

Contact:
Ian Knopke
Current Position:
Main Field of Research:
Relevant Qualifications:
Recent Work:
Contact:

Lecturer in Music, Univerity of Aberdeen, Scotland

Musicology
Renaissance compositional practice, performance practice,
performance
B. Hons. Mus. Theory and Composition, University of Western
Ontario, L. Mus. Performance, McGill University, Ph.D. Musicology at
McGill University (2005)
using computers to study the distribution of accidentals in the
Buxheim Organ Book and its concordances, post-doctoral
fellowship with Jessie Ann Owens on Palestrina. Talk at the Center
for Computer-Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford
University.
f.jurgensen@abdn.ac.uk
Research Associate, Music Informatics, Indiana University
Music Information Retrieval / Computer Music
B.Mus Composition, M.A. Music Theory, University of Alberta; Ph.D.
Music Technology, McGill University
computational musicology, algorithmic composition methods,
location, indexing and searching of music on the Internet, and signal
processing and synthesis of recorded audio
ian.knopke@gmail.com

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