ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE AND MUSICAL COGNITION

There has been much interest, in recent years, in the possibility of r epresenting our musical faculties in computational terms. A necessary first step is to develop a formally precise theory of musical structur e, and to this end, useful analogies may be drawn between music and na tural language. Metrical rhythms resemble syntactic structures in bein g generated by phrase-structure grammars; as for the pitch relations b etween notes, the tonal intervals of Western music form a mathematical group generated by the octave, the fifth and the third. On this theor etical foundation one can construct AI programs for the transcription, editing and performance of classical keyboard music. A high degree of complexity and precision is required for the faithful representation of a sophisticated pianoforte composition, and to achieve a satisfacto ry level of performance it is essential to respect the minute variatio ns of loudness and timing by which human performers reveal its hierarc hical structure.