Investigating Renaissance polyphony with digital tools. Development and application of the new software ReDiX for harmonic analysis

Abstract

In recent years, a lot of effort has been spent in developing music analysis software capable of interpreting and analysing a vast quantity of data and extrapolating relevant features. This has been accompanied by a constantly growing amount of music available in machine-readable formats. In this thesis, I will introduce my newly programmed software, ReDiX – Renaissance Digital eXplorer, which is designed for harmonic analysis of Renaissance polyphonic music. The development of this tool and its practical application to some current musicological research has enhanced the understanding of the music at hand, providing at times statistical confirmation of hypotheses, at time surprising answers, and opening up numerous fronts of discussion.