Historiography of the form of symbolic music through a computer-assisted analysis

This paper presents a selection of the analytical and musichistorical results of the research project “Historiography of musical form through MIR” 1 . It discusses the modes of operation, strengths and shortcomings of the software ‘AnalyzeSrttpf’ 2 , especially its suitability to contribute to closing a gap in the historiography of 18th-century music.
The software identifies the small rounded two/ three-part form (srttpf) in large corpora with symbolic music,the elements of which are short monophonic compositions (songs and dances). In doing this, AnalyzeSrttpf shall help to reconstruct firstly the occurrence of the srttpf in popular music published in London between 1650 and 1770, and secondly its relationship to popular Viennese classical music, a style that shows a similar preference for the srttpf.