Statistical Musicology: Embracing Hindustani Ragas (Focus on Civilizations and Cultures - Music)

"The theory of musical structure is a rapidly developing field of musicology that has wide practical implications. Due to the complex nature of music, statistics is likely to play an important role. In the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in modeling musical performance. This development is in particular due to the dramatic advances in computer technology and the availability of digitized score and performance data, especially in Western Classical music where a clearly defined score exists. This book includes a similar but more challenging study in Indian Classical music where the scores are not fixed. In order to analyze performances in this genre, the book first develops musical scores based on studio recordings in this genre, which are performed extemporaneously. Then, the book computationally analyzes the structure and performance of the music. Structurally, it considers fundamental aspects such as aroh (ascent) , awaroh (descent) , and pakad (catch) . In terms of performance, features like note duration and pitch movements between notes are considered. Statistics and probability are used to analyze the music"--