Maninpasta minutes: OntologyDesign#1

[albertmeronyo]

Issue to discuss progress in OntologyDesign#1, focusing on ontologies to describe modes and modal analysis

[mwigham]

Concepts collected in this document

[albertmeronyo]

OntologyDesign#1 drafting

Relevant concepts in the CQs of Sethus

• Formula
  • Mode
    • Dorian
    • Phrygian
    • Lydian
    • Mixolydian
  • Tonus Peregrinus (maybe an instance?)
• Interval
• Phrase (beware of “fragment” and “segment” and “part”)
• Mode assignment (similar pattern exists in ArCo)
• Modal hypothesis
  • For entire composition
  • For part of composition
• Theoretical model
  • Zarlinian cadential scheme ^1-^3-^5
• Analytical point of view
• Observation of criteria
• Criteria for mode (better name?)
  • Objective criteria
  • Subjective criteria
• Musical notation
  • Score
• Part (or Voice)
  • Bassus
  • Tenor
  • Cantus
  • Altus
• Range of voices
• Clef of part
• Key of part
• Final of the bassus
• Composition (= work in this case)
  • Motet (mainly vocal musical composition)
• Analysis
• Researcher
• Work
• Hexachord (instead of modern scale)
• Pattern associated to modes
  • Melodic
  • harmonic
  • Cadence point (tension resolution)

“Scale” discussion:

• They didn’t have scales as we know them today; they had hexachords (they coincide with the modern 1-2-3-4-5-6 in modern scales)

Models:

• These are never exact

Patterns:

• partOf (composition - fragments, segments, etc.) - mode can be assigned to both the whole and its parts, separately.
• Interpretation - tonalities assignment
• Description & Situation: observation - interpretation - classification
  • Mode
  • Part’s ranges -> Modal octaves
• Mode is a Description (a way to organise pitches, it has feature e.g. model octave is a feature of a mode)

Scope question (for later):

• What parts of the CQs should the ontology support?

Relevant ontologies:

• Music Ontology
• Music Theory Ontology
• Ontology for mensural notation -> MEI supports encoding of mensural https://music-encoding.org/guidelines/v3/content/mensural.html
• MusicOWL - musical score ontology
• FRBR
• Provenance? E.g. PROV-O
• Observations? E.g. SSN

Next steps:

• Specialise the patterns according to/using the terminology/taxonomy
• Analyse the next competency questions
• Sync with Sethus story’s authors
• Identify alignments/reuse (see relevant ontologies)

[albertmeronyo]

2nd maninpasta: Marco's work on requirements for a Modal Ontology https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1odOcpU8E7eFmCyhcgy-uLMqMGzwC6h_ned0Rfex2Xx0/edit#gid=0

[albertmeronyo]

2nd maninpasta: we came up with a graffoo diagram for an ontology of musical theories for analysis (also at the SharePoint > Maninpasta > Sethus)

[albertmeronyo]

Session 14-05-2021: Absolutely brilliant first draft for a modal tonal ontology by Christophe and Marco at https://github.com/guillotel-nothmann/modal-tonal-ontology/tree/main/historicalModels

Instances of the ontology will typically (but not always) be segments/fragments pointing at some section of an MEI document

AP: discuss ontology engineering issues around this draft in the OntologyDesign working sessions

[albertmeronyo]

The ontology is an interpretation of the Michael Praetorius book http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/1-1-musica-3s/start.htm?image=0053 It's digitised at Huma at http://tmg.huma-num.fr/xtf/view?docId=tei/Praetorius%201619/Praetorius%201619.xml;chunk.id=div_2_3_6;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div_2_3;brand=default#X Christophe has an article about it at https://www.gmth.de/zeitschrift/artikel/1073.aspx

Ontology contains provenance links to sections of the book that were used to model concepts

[albertmeronyo]

Challenge: distinction between classes and individuals (instances)

[albertmeronyo]

Documenting classes and relations

Pointer to W3C PROV: idea of "trusted ontology engineering" with full provenance traces of decisions made during conceptualisation

[albertmeronyo]

Pointer to https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/ Container Classes to model multiple interpretations over the source, possibly with order