Computational Humanities Research Talk: Quantifying Cultural Change Through Musical Scores

Can cultural change be measured rather than only described? Music offers an unusually good test case: digital scores are accessible, precisely notated, datable, and can be represented mathematically. Focusing on harmony, Alfredo Gonzalez Espinoza uses a geometric model of tonality to measure how widely a piece roams across keys (diversity), how ambiguous its tonal centers are (uncertainty), and how far it departs from earlier music (novelty). Applied across four centuries of Western musical scores, these measures recover recognized temporal trends and documented lines of influence, providing a quantitative vocabulary for testing claims about stylistic change. Please register if you plan to attend in person. Lunch will be provided for attendees who request one during registration.