An accent-based approach to automatic rendering of piano performance

We are exploring the relationship between accents and expression in piano per-formance. Accents are local events that attract a listener’s attention and are either evident from the score (immanent) or added by the performer (performed). Imma-nent accents are associated with grouping (phrasing), metre, melody and harmony. In piano music, performed accents involve changes in timing, dynamics, articula-tion, and pedalling; they vary in amplitude, form, and duration. We analyzed the first eight bars of Chopin Prelude op. 28 n. 6. In a separate study, music theorists had marked grouping, melodic and harmonic accents on the score and estimated the importance (salience) of each. Here, we mathematically modeled timing and dynam-ics in the prelude in two ways using Director Musices (DM) – a software package for automatic rendering of expressive performance. The first rendering focused on phrasing following existing and tested procedures in DM. The second focused on ac-cents – timing and dynamics in the vicinity of the accents identified by the theorists. In an informal listening test, 10 out of 12 participants (5 of 6 musicians and 5 of 6 non-musicians) preferred the accent-based formulation, and several stated that it had more variation of timing and dynamics from one phrase to the next