ABSTRACT
Traditional musical notation has developed in about ten centuries from a primitive memory aid to an apparently precise representation of music in sounds and actions. However, modern notation still is not complete enough to reflect all the details and subtleties of a composition. What we gain by this shortcoming is a variety of interpretations, a possibility of re-creating the same piece. In fact, the deviations from the written material constitute an essential part of music communication. Evidently, discrepancies can occur as a result of too little experience or lapses of attention. For this research only those performance variations are interesting that are intentional. Because the performer is not always aware of these intentions, it is an interesting question why a performance deviates from the notation and how we can formalize the motives behind this, thus making it possible to generate a musical performance from a score. Not only is there a considerable scientific interest in this subject, but also musicians using computer music sequencers in step time feel the need for a ‘human touch’ feature in quantised sequences.
