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Re: Tools for harmonic analysis (Riemann style)


From: Lukas-Fabian Moser
Subject: Re: Tools for harmonic analysis (Riemann style)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 14:45:56 +0200
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Hi Urs,

finally I'm in need of symbols for harmonic analysis (in about the Riemann flavour).

Just to provide some context to this request (of course, I assume you are perfectly aware of all this): The style of harmonic analysis is quite different from any of the many flavours Hugo Riemann proposed originally. Rather, in incorporates fundamental changes established by later German-speaking authors, most importantly Reger, Grabner and Maler. (To name but a few: The abandoning of Riemann's dualistic approach to minor keys, the upper-/lowercase distinction for major/minor sonorities, the designation of inversions by giving the bass note relative to the root, the notion of 'Gegenklang' instead of Riemanns 'Leittonwechselklang' etc.)

But what's important is that the exact style in used in Urs's example became quasi-standard in German-speaking countries in the second half of the 20th century, and apparently it still is so, at least for highschool/undergraduate level. (I'm often amazed in my music theory classes at German/Austrian music universities when some alternative descriptions of sonorities such as viiĀ°6, ii65 or a French Sixth are quite often only very reluctantly accepted by the German-speaking students who state they learned the "real" explanation, i.e. Maler-style functional analysis, at school.)

To wit, Urs's request is probably shared by lots of users from Germany/Austria. (I, for one, never needed them in Lilypond until this year, at which occasion I used the LSR snippet that Harm already pointed you to).

I'd very much be interested in discussing questions of design, interface, variants-to-be-supported etc. for this. One might probably learn a lot from David Nalesnik's excellent roman numeral analysis tool (https://github.com/davidnalesnik/lilypond-roman-numeral-tool). I imagine that matters will probably be more complicated than with roman numerals, but at least for these, David implemented an ingenious syntax and layout engine.

And @Malte, am I wrong if I remember that I saw some work on functional analysis symbols done by you?

I would go for it by creating a lyrics-like context for the horizontal and vertical alignment and produce some functions that would create combined markups or stencils for the symbols. Additional challenges would be to define practical ways to use something like stanzas for modulations and boxes around that (a sample image attached).
Stanzas are ideal for indicating key regions (I use them regularly for roman numeral analysis). As for the boxes, this probably needs some new kind of interface.

I might also be willing to use LaTeX for the creation of the symbols because I could then combine efforts for a standalone LaTeX package to produce the symbols in continuous text too.

I'd very much argue for a LilyPond-only solution in order to rely as little as possible on a specific toolchain.

Lukas





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