MUSIC, INFORMATION, AND THE GENERAL SYSTEMS PROBLEM SOLVER: A NEW ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

For nearly four decades, scientists and music theorists have proposed means to express musical style as information. The Shannon entropy has been used for this purpose based upon the following two assertions: (1) musical composition is essentially the selection of musical symbols within sets of constraints, and (2) a compositional process can be characterized mathematically in a general, abstract manner. Such proposals have been widely criticized, principally on the grounds that only limited numbers of parameters are considered in most cases, and then only in terms of how symbols representing pitch, harmony or rhythm are selected independently of the overall relationships which result from such selections. The ways in which pitch, harmony, and rhythm are interrelated is an issue that is virtually ignored. A major premise of the present discussion is that musical style can be expressed as information only in terms of mathematical relations on multiple sets of musical symbols. The General Systems Problem Solver (GSPS), developed by George Klir, may be utilized for this purpose.

INDEX TERMS:

• Shannon entropy
• generative entropy
• information theory
• musical style
• GSPS
• metasystem