The WesterParse Project

The WesterParse Project is a suite of tools for parsing and analyzing tonal music in the tradition of Heinrich Schenker, based on the work of Peter Westergaard.

The first tool is designed to evaluate basic species counterpoint exercises for conformity with Westergaard’s rules of line construction and voice leading.

Launch Westergaardian Species Counterpoint Online

WesterParse, a Python package that makes extensive use of music21, is the engine of WSCO. It has two main components:

• a transition-based dependency parser for simple tonal lines
• a voice-leading evaluator for species counterpoint

WesterParse on GitHub

To test for compliance with Westergaard’s rules, a corpus of 143 examples was assembled:

• 73 examples of single lines
• 70 examples of counterpoint

Of these examples, 74 are taken from Westergaard’s book (these are identified by page number in the filename).

A public-facing website for the corpus is under development.

Another tool (under development) will parse linear elaborations in melodic lines, using the repertory of linear operations described by Westergaard.

Principal Investigator

Robert Snarrenberg, Associate Professor of Music, Washington University

Phase One: 2018–2020

Stephen Pentecost, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist, Humanities Digital Workshop, Washington University

Phase Two: 2025

Douglas Knox, Assistant Director, Humanities Digital Workshop, Washington University

Tumaini Ussiri, Digital Humanities Specialist, Humanities Digital Workshop, Washington University

Michelle Zhang, WU undergraduate student

Dexter Chen, WU undergraduate student

James Baba, WU undergraduate student

This project would not have been possible without the ongoing support of the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis.

Financial support for Phase Two was provided by a generous grant from the Digital Intelligence and Innovation Accelerator at Washington University.

“Westergaardian Species Counterpoint Online.” Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Forthcoming.

“WesterParse: A Transition-based Dependency Parser for Tonal Species Counterpoint.” In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education — Volume 1: CSME, 669–79. INSTICC, SciTePress, 2021.

“WesterParse: Software for Evaluating Westergaardian Species Counterpoint.” Documentation report.

WesterParse Code Documentation on Read the Docs.

The WesterParse Project is based on ideas developed by Peter Westergaard in An Introduction to Tonal Theory (New York, 1975).

WesterParse is built on top of music21, a toolkit for computer-aided musicology developed by Michael Asato Cuthbert and colleagues at MIT. We gratefully acknowledge their work and the open-source community that supports it.

The WSCO web interface was built using VexFlow, with audio feedback provided by tone.js and midi.js. File export to pdf makes use of Lilypond.