Music Analysis and Composition


Yamaha CF3S, my favorite instrument

As of 2005, I made several attempts to digitally analyze keyboard music by Johann Sebastian Bach. My goal is to make a software that aids to compose beautiful fugues and to ultimately create the fugues for Das Wohltemperierte Klavier III. The motivation of our efforts is encaptured by a quote of Martin Geck:

Altogether, though, The Well-Tempered Clavier is about something greater: the piece is not about the player being introduced into the realm of music, but about the music itself, which unveils a part of its universality.

Doch insgesamt geht es beim Wohltemperierten Klavier um Größeres: Das Werk ist nicht vom Spieler her gedacht, der in das Reich der Musik eingeführt werden soll, sondern von der Musik her, die ein Stück ihrer Universalität enthüllt.

Software I used earlier for music notation:

The Pirate Fugues
NoteZcore · Note Extraction from Piano Recordings
Fugues by jph
Compositions 2002-2003
Piano Transcriptions

The vast majority of scores by Johann Sebastian Bach are extremely skillful patchworks of single-voiced, uninterrupted sequences of notes. The Pirate Fugues software distills the set of distinct note sequences that are conceptually reused within a score. We export the results for the Inventions, the Sinfonias, the preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier I and II, as well as the scores from The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Scores by Johann Sebastian Bach
Inventions and Sinfonias
The Well-Tempered Clavier I
The Well-Tempered Clavier II
The Art of Fugue
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,
Ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht;
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fugues by jph

Using the software The Pirate Fugues, I compose fugues myself:

sheet music description audio
La Campanella

La Campanella The theme for the fugue is taken from Etude III (La Campanella) of Grandes Etudes de Paganini by Ferenc Liszt. In fact, both, the red and orange motifs are adapted from the original score.

I was hoping for some kind of tactical plan
that didn't involve martyrdom.
Trudy Chacon

Credits: Media postprocessing with the following open-source software: StepVoice Recorder by StepVoice Software for midi to mp3 recording, Mp3splt-gtk by Matteo Trotta and Alexandru Munteanu to truncate mp3 files, and VirtualDub by Avery Lee to merge video and audio. Flash Mp3 Player by Eric Heunthep.

Blissful Productivity
Social Fabric
Urgent Optimism
Epic Meaning
Jane McGonigal

Compositions 2002-2003

Concept for a Piano Concert - To Charlotte opus09_chb.mid 23 kB
For Natascha 2003 opus08_nwb.mid 14 kB
Pseudo Canon opus07_can.mid 6 kB
For Natascha 2002 opus02_nwb.mid 17 kB
... or download the scores as Finale mus-files and view them with Finale Reader.
Whatever is begun in anger
ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin

Piano Transcriptions

The piano transcriptions below were manufactured to accompany singers.

The font guido2.ttf is required to view the pdf-files. Under Windows, simply copy the ttf-file into the folder windows/fonts.

Constantinople constantinople.pdf 15 kB
Drunkards Child drunkards-child.pdf 16 kB
Gimme-Gimme (ABBA) gimme-gimme.pdf 16 kB
Glorious Beer glorious-beer.pdf 15 kB
Jasmine Flower (Chinese folk song) jasmine-flower.pdf 16 kB
Modern General modern-general.pdf 14 kB
Oklahoma oklahoma.pdf 17 kB
Policemans Song policemans-song... 17 kB
... or download the collection as gmn-files and view them with GUIDO note viewer.
almost, but not quite,
entirely unlike tea
Arthur Dent