WHAT AN interesting juxtapositon of articles in the July 8 Ideas section of the Globe: Leon Neyfakh’s “Music by the numbers,” and Doug Hill’s “Not under our control.”
While it is exciting to consider the possibilities of being able to analyze and understand the melodies, harmonic and rhythmic structures, dynamic schemes, and tempi of thousands of hours of music through computational musicology, the process and its potential uses seem uncomfortably close to Jacques Ellul’s warning that, as Hill puts it, technology is “an overwhelming force that has already escaped our control.”
I, for one, don’t want my email to be bombarded with “suggestions” of music I might like to listen to based upon my iTunes library or other internet musical purchases. Indeed, I hope my students and I will continue to be able to explore music based upon our emotional responses to performances and our own intellectual curiosity.