APPROACHING ATONAL-MUSIC ANALYSIS THROUGH COMPUTER-AIDED STRATEGIES: TWO REPORTS FROM UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ DATA

Resumen

During more than one century, atonal music has become a significative trend of the many facets of Western art music. Unlike tonal music, which is clearly ubiquitous in different stages of music education since childhood, this repertoire is only approached in deep when reaching higher music education, both in conservatoires and universities. The departments of musicology of many Western universities include the analysis of atonal music in their respective syllabi. This sort of analysis often requires complex mechanisms of conceptualization and representation of the inspected musical features; the use of software particularly designed for music analysis may facilitate the mentioned task. My paper is based on data retrieved from my students in the Master degree of musicology at the Complutense University of Madrid during the last three years. A first report inspects the evolution of the results of an exercise with pitch-class set theory which was asked to be solved by hand but may be partially assisted with specific software. A second report depends on a survey in which students were asked to consider potential uses of software for music analysis when approaching atonal repertoires. Both reports shed light on the value of incorporating new technologies in the analytical study of atonal music.