Content-Aware Web Browsing and Visualization Tools for Cantillation and Chant Research

Chant and cantillation research is particularly interesting as it explores the transition from oral to written transmission of music. The goal of this work to create web-based computational tools that can assist the study of how diverse recitation traditions, having their origin in primarily non-notated melodies, later became codified. One of the authors is a musicologist and music theorist who has guided the system design and development by providing manual annotations and participating in the design process. We describe novel content-based visualization and analysis algorithms that can be used for problem-seeking exploration of audio recordings of chant and recitations.