Presenter: Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (Independent scholar)

Title: A.I., Similarity, and Search in Medieval Music: New Methodologies and Source Identifications

Discussants: Theodor Dumitrescu (Independent scholar), Margaret Bent and others, including David Fallows, Paweł Gancarczyk, Richard Dudas

Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert: “In a series of pre-pandemic talks I introduced a new database and computational tools for identifying concordances in late medieval music: EMMSAP, the Electronic Medieval Music Score Archive Project. When I last spoke at Oxford in 2015 I had discovered 13 concordances through EMMSAP; by the last presentations before Covid there were 34.

After a brief recap of previous findings (especially those not yet published), I will present 22 new connections made using digital tools, including the first identifications of pieces on slate and of new quotations within the Turin/Cyprus codex. The talk will also expand on the various computational methods and encodings that have been successful in making new identifications (quick encodings, brute force, human directed, and “old-style” A.I.) and those that have not (detailed “musicological” encodings, indexed and automated search, and newer A.I. such as deep learning and GPTs). To get the most from digital tools, the talk will also advocate for a new role in musicological publication: the encoding-discoverer far outside her or his realm of expertise.”