Abstract

This article describes a new expert-labelled dataset featuring harmonic, phrase, and cadence analyses of all piano sonatas by W.A. Mozart. The dataset draws on the DCML standard for harmonic annotation and is being published adopting the FAIR principles of Open Science. The annotations have been verified using a data triangulation procedure which is presented as an alternative approach to handling annotator subjectivity. This procedure is suited for ensuring consistency, within the dataset and beyond, despite the high level of analytical detail afforded by the employed harmonic annotation syntax. The harmony labels also encode contextual information and are therefore suited for investigating music theoretical questions related to tonal harmony and the harmonic makeup of cadences in the classical style. Apart from providing basic statistical analyses characterizing the dataset, its music theoretical potential is illustrated by two preliminary experiments, one on the terminal harmonies of cadences and the other on the relation between performance durations and harmonic density. Furthermore, particular features can be selected to produce more coarse-grained training data, for example for chord detection algorithms that require less analytical detail. Facilitating the dataset’s reusability, it comes with a Python script that allows researchers to easily access various representations of the data tailored to their particular needs.

Highlights

  • Polyphonic music is typically characterized by its harmonic makeup

  • The corpus consists of the digital scores of all 18 piano sonatas (1774–1789) by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart which have been annotated by music theory experts on three levels: harmony, cadences, and phrases

  • The chord and phrase labels follow the Digital and Cognitive Musicology Lab (DCML) harmonic annotation standard,1 whereas the cadence labels are based on the typology and definitions by Caplin (2004) and Rohrmeier and Neuwirth (2015)

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Summary

Introduction

Polyphonic music is typically characterized by its harmonic makeup. The study of (tonal) harmony occupies a prominent position in musicological research. The corpus consists of the digital scores of all 18 piano sonatas (1774–1789) by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart which have been annotated by music theory experts on three levels: harmony, cadences, and phrases. 2.2 Cadence Datasets Within the domain of modal and tonal harmony, cadences act as salient structural patterns used to achieve closure on multiple hierarchical levels These patterns are organized in different temporal phases: initial tonic ⟹ predominant ⟹ dominant ⟹ tonic. Size and analytical richness, are tackled by the cadence dataset introduced in the present paper, which is much larger than previous datasets but is supplemented by detailed harmonic annotations As a result, it constitutes a valuable resource for investigating the complex interplay of structural components and has the potential of advancing our understanding of the harmonic nature of cadences. The scores’ content conforms in many respects to a modern authoritative edition

Contextual Information and Granularity
Analytic Consistency
Encoding Temporal Positions
Encoding Tonal Hierarchy
Encoding Chord and Non-Chord Tones
Phrase Annotations
Terminal Harmonies of Cadences
Performance Durations and Harmonic Density
Findings
Discussion
Full Text
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