Reflections on the History of Computer-Assisted Music Analysis I: Predecessors and the Beginnings

This article is the first of a series that focuses on the history of computer-assisted music analysis. This first article discusses the philosophical basis of computer-assisted music analysis, i.e. the application of information theory to aesthetics, as well as representative applications of statistical and information-theoretical measurements to music analysis and other computational approaches to music analysis that did not include the use of electronic computers. In most cases, those approaches were direct models for computer-assisted applications. Finally, this article provides a short historical account of the development of early computers and summarizes the earliest computer-applications to music analysis, carried out during the 1950s