How many musical masterpieces from the fourteenth century have been lost to time?
In short: Professor Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert explores the statistical challenge of estimating the volume of music lost from the fourteenth century. This lecture from MIT's Computational Music Theory and Analysis course demonstrates how modern data methods can help reconstruct the missing history of medieval composition.
In this lecture, Professor Cuthbert addresses the 'iceberg' problem in musicology: the vast majority of fourteenth-century music is no longer extant. By applying new statistical techniques, he attempts to quantify the scale of this loss, providing a clearer picture of the musical landscape that existed before the surviving records were created.
The analysis is part of the Spring 2023 course 21M.383 at MIT. It highlights how computational tools allow researchers to look beyond existing manuscripts to infer the true breadth of historical artistic output.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Video 32a: Tipping the Iceberg
- Also: Video 32a: Tipping the Iceberg | Computational Music Theory and Analysis | Music | MIT OpenCourseWare
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