An accent-based approach to performance rendering: Music theory meets music psychology

Accents are local events that attract a listener’s attention and are either evident from the score (immanent) or added by the performer (performed). Immanent accents are associated with grouping, meter, melody, and harmony. In piano music, performed accents involve changes in timing, dynamics, articulation, and pedaling; they vary in amplitude, form, and duration. Performers tend to “bring out” immanent accents by means of performed accents, which attracts the listener’s attention to them. We are mathematically modeling timing and dynamics near immanent accents in a selection of Chopin Preludes using an extended version of Director Musices (DM), a software package for automatic rendering of expressive performance. We are developing DM in a new direction, which allows us to relate expressive features of a performance not only to global or intermediate structural properties, but also accounting for local events.