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L. Eibensteiner:
"Polyphonic Music Composition with Grammars";
Supervisor: M. Wimmer; Visual Computing and Human-Centered Technology, 2021; final examination: 2021-05-18.

We present a theoretical framework for automatic music composition with formal grammars and a focus on polyphonic structures. In the context of this thesis, a polyphonic structure is any arrangement of musical entities (notes, chords, measures, etc.) that is not purely sequential in the time dimension. Given that the natural output of a grammar is a sequence, the generation of sequential structures, such as melodies, harmonic progressions, and rhythmic patterns, follows intuitively and has already been explored in prior works. By contrast, we associate each musical entity with an independent temporal scope, allowing the representation of both sequential and parallel arrangements. With overlapping entities we can model chords, drum patterns, and parallel voices---polyphony on small and large scales. Beyond a foundational discussion of functional techniques for polyphonic composition with non-deterministic context-free grammars, we demonstrate the implementation and practical application of an automated composition system developed on these principles.

http://dx.doi.org/10.34726/hss.2021.90440

https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_301655.pdf