This is the second volume of the second edition of the now classic book “The Topos of Music”. The author explains his theory of musical performance, developed in the language of differential geometry, introducing performance vector fields that generalize tempo and intonation. The author also shows how Rubato, a software platform for composition, analysis, and performance, allows an experimental evaluation of principles of expressive performance theories.

With contributions by numerous experts

This book fills a gap between theory and creativity in musicianship. This frequently observed gap fixes theory as a rigidified level of thought, where creativity is excluded from a canonized corpus of ideas. Creativity, on the other hand, is preconceived as a theory-less, wild activity that blossoms while performing pre-composed musical structures. This book provides a discussion of the creative drive in theory and theory-inspired thoughts while understanding how these ideas shape performance. The future of music is only as limited as one’s imagination, and, to this end, the text illuminates examples of creative musicianship.

This is the first volume of the second edition of the now classic book “The Topos of Music”. The author explains the theory's conceptual framework of denotators and forms, the classification of local and global musical objects, the mathematical models of harmony and counterpoint, and topologies for rhythm and motives.

The idea of this monograph is to present an overview of decisive theoretical, computational, technological, aesthetical, artistic, economical, and sociological directions to create future music. It features a unique insight into dominant scientific and artistic new directions, which are guaranteed by the authors' prominent publications in books, software, musical, and dance productions. Applying recent research results from mathematical and computational music theory and software as well as new ideas of embodiment approaches and non-Western music cultures, this book presents new composition methods and technologies. Mathematical, computational, and semiotic models of artistic presence (imaginary time, gestural creativity) as well as strategies are also covered. This book will be of interest to composers, music technicians, and organizers in the internet-based music industry, who are offered concrete conceptual architectures and tools for their future strategies in musical creativity and production.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, MCM 2019, held in Madrid, Spain, in June 2019. The 22 full papers and 10 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The papers feature research that combines mathematics or computation with music theory, music analysis, composition, and performance. They are organized in topical sections on algebraic and other abstract mathematical approaches to understanding musical objects; remanaging Riemann: mathematical music theory as “experimental philosophy”?; octave division; computer-based approaches to composition and score structuring; models for music cognition and beat tracking; pedagogy of mathematical music theory. The chapter “Distant Neighbors and Interscalar Contiguities” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book presents and discusses the fundamental topic of classification of musical objects, such as chords, motifs, and gestures. Their classification deals with the exhibition of isomorphism classes. Our structure types include local and global constructions, the latter being similar to global structures in geometry, such as differentiable manifolds. The discussion extends to the role, which classification plays for the creative construction of musical compositions. Our examples include references to classical compositions, such as Beethoven’s sonatas, and some of the author’s own compositions of classical and jazz styles. We also discuss software that enables the application of classification to musical creativity. The volume is addressed to an audience that would apply classification to programming and creative musical construction.