PhD position in Big data history of music open again (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Christine Bauer
Dear WiMIR people,
I am happy to share the PhD vacancy to work on with my dear colleague Frans Wiering on the project CANTOSTREAM (details below).
If you are into Renaissance and Baroque music, this is for you!
Kind regards,
Christine Bauer
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Dr. Christine Bauer | Assistant Professor | Department of Information and Computing Sciences | Utrecht University | Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC Utrecht | Buys Ballotgebouw, room 4.13 | +31 30 253 4158 | c.b...@uu.nl | www.uu.nl/staff/CBauer | https://christinebauer.eu | Present: Mon-Fri
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Dear MIR community,
Best regards,
Frans Wiering=============================
The documented history of western music spans over a millennium. Generations of scholars have written detailed accounts of compositional techniques, musical styles and genres, and influential composers and their masterworks. Hidden below the great variety of western music are long-term patterns of historical change, which are more difficult to study when using traditional close reading methods of musicology. Computational approaches analysing large amounts of musical works may help to unearth these patterns.
During the 16th and 17th centuries a transition took place from modality, with its emphasis on melodic structures, to harmonic tonality governed by chord progressions. Musicologists still struggle to understand this transition based on the study of individual compositions. The project Computational ANalysis of TOnal STRuctures in EArly Music (CANTOSTREAM) proposes a big data approach instead. The project’s aim is to create and use machine learning methods for ‘distant listening’ to a large cross-section of the available music, in order to a gain deeper insight into the historical development of tonal structures during these centuries.
As the prospective PhD candidate on this 5-year project, you will be involved in studying the large body of early music that has been recorded since the late 1960s. In addition, you will analyse collections of encoded scores and large-scale metadata resources such as RISM. Relevant features include modes, scales, dissonance, cadences, melodic and harmonic patterns.
We offer a diverse set of tasks:
- assemble the musical corpus;
- select and operationalise relevant musical concepts;
- review, create and evaluate machine learning methods for the analysis of musical corpora;
- analyse historical change in relation to factors such as geographical origin, genre, function and ensemble composition;
- relate the outcomes to musicological insights and research problems.
In addition, you will partake in teaching Bachelor's and Master's courses, offered by the Department of Information and Computing Sciences. The teaching commitments are limited to a maximum of 30% of employment time.
We are looking for a candidate who is versatile and persistent and who has:
- a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Information Science, Computational Musicology or a related field;
- well-developed programming skills;
- a strong motivation for interdisciplinary research;
- good working knowledge of music (notation, basic theory);
- a passion for music history;
- affinity for academic teaching;
- good communication skills in English, both in speech and in writing.
We offer an exciting opportunity to contribute to an ambitious and international education programme with highly motivated students and to conduct your own research project at a renowned research university. You will receive appropriate training, personal supervision, and guidance for both your research and teaching tasks, which will provide an excellent start to an academic career.
In addition, you will have
- the opportunity to work in a collaborative, social, and dedicated team of Researchers;
- a full-time position for 5 years;
- a full-time gross salary that starts at €2,395 and increases to €3,061 per month in the fourth year (scale P of the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities (cao));
- benefits including 8% holiday bonus and 8.3% end-of-year bonus;
- a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, and flexible employment conditions based on the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities.
In addition to the employment conditions laid down in the cao for Dutch Universities, Utrecht University has a number of its own arrangements. For example, there are agreements on professional development, leave arrangements and sports. We also give you the opportunity to expand your terms of employment yourself via the Employment Conditions Selection Model. This is how we like to encourage you to continue to grow.