Musical chronology by seriation

The statistical process of seriation arranges a set of objects along a one-dimensional line so that the distance between each pair of objects reflects the dissimilarity between them. The process has recently been cast into an algorithm which makes it feasible to seriate a few tens of objects efficiently on a personal computer. This algorithm is now used for establishing a chronology of the Troubadours according to certain melodic features in their works. Other musicological uses for seriation are proposed.David Halperin is a Lecturer in the Department of Musicology, Tel Aviv University, specializing in computer-aided analysis of monophonic music. He has published articles on the Ambrosian chant and on the ancient musical notation from Ugarit. His publications include A Segmentation Algorithm and its Application to Medieval Monophonic Music,Musikometrika, 2 (1990) and Towards Deciphering the Ugaritic Musical Notation,Musikometrika, 4 (1992).This is an expanded version of a paper given at the 15th Congress of the International Musicological Society, Madrid, 1992.