On the resolution of musical conflicts

Abstract

Musical composition corresponds more to problem design than to problem solving (Laske 1991). Composers need a flexible way of designing their problem. We propose a model in which composers may build their musical problem step by step. They can always change their mind and modify a part of the problem. At some point of the process, the problem may have no more solutions because the new given data is incompatible with the others. We call such a situation a conflict. Composers have to resolve the conflict, i.e., make the problem consistent again in order to continue the design of the piece. The system helps them in that task by proposing them to simply remove the data inducing the conflict, or keep it and try to remove some previous data to finally resolve the conflict. In this paper, we consider musical problems bound to the temporal structure of the piece. We introduce the musical characteristics belonging to what we call the zero‐class. This model is particularly simple and efficient for detecting and solving conflicts concerning this class of characteristics.