String-based methods for tonal harmony: A corpus study of Haydn's string quartets

Abstract

This chapter considers how string-based methods might be adapted to address music-analytic questions related to the discovery of musical organization, with particular attention devoted to the analysis of tonal harmony. I begin by applying the taxonomy of mental organization proposed by Mandler (1979) to the concept of musical organization. Using this taxonomy as a guide, I then present evidence for three principles of tonal harmony -- recurrence, syntax, and recursion -- using a corpus of Haydn string quartets.

This is an original manuscript / preprint of a book chapter: Sears, David R. W (in press). String-based methods for tonal harmony: A corpus study of Haydn's string quartets." In D. Shanahan, A. Burgoyne, & I. Quinn (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Music and Corpus Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. The manuscript contains 2 musical examples, 3 figures, and 4 tables