A Digital Analysis of Harmonic Integration in the Music of Anton Webern

This project is a computational corpus study that considers harmonic integration in the 31 works of Anton Webern (1883–1945). Harmonic integration concerns the relationship between combinations of notes that sound simultaneously (vertical) and consecutively (linear). During the project, I will write code in Python to analyze the 31 works in the corpus and establish empirically the degree of integration between the vertical and linear domains. This will then be assessed statistically with
regard to chronology, instrumentation, and other pertinent variables.
The results of this research will provide a novel viewpoint on this feature of Webern’s music which he himself identified as crucially important. They will be written up in one or more papers, which will be submitted for prestigious musicological journals. The code and data developed in the project will be published under a Creative Commons license, and so will be accessible by other scholars carrying out related research.

Faculty Supervisor:

Leigh VanHandel

Student:

Partner:

University of Oxford

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Entertainment and Media; New and Digital Media

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: