Books by Álvaro Torrente
Francesco Cavalli "La Calisto": Edited by Álvaro Torrente (Score) Nicola Badolato (Libretto), 2012
This essay was the opening section of the critical edition of the score of la Calisto published b... more This essay was the opening section of the critical edition of the score of la Calisto published by Bärenreiter Verlag in 2012. It provides a thorough study of the opera, the sources of the libretto, the circumstances of the production, including fresh ides about the performers) and the characteristics of the libretto and its music.
Papers by Álvaro Torrente
Routledge eBooks, Feb 29, 2024
arXiv (Cornell University), Jul 11, 2023
This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of existing feature extraction tools for symbol... more This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of existing feature extraction tools for symbolic music and contrasts their performance to determine the set of features that best characterizes the musical style of a given music score. In this regard, we propose a novel feature extraction tool, named musif, and evaluate its efficacy on various repertoires and file formats, including MIDI, MusicXML, and **kern. Musif approximates existing tools such as jSymbolic and music21 in terms of computational efficiency while attempting to enhance the usability for custom feature development. The proposed tool also enhances classification accuracy when combined with other sets of features. We demonstrate the contribution of each set of features and the computational resources they require. Our findings indicate that the optimal tool for feature extraction is a combination of the best features from each tool rather than those of a single one. To facilitate future research in music information retrieval, we release the source code of the tool and benchmarks.
arXiv (Cornell University), Jul 3, 2023
In this work, we introduce musif, a Python package that facilitates the automatic extraction of f... more In this work, we introduce musif, a Python package that facilitates the automatic extraction of features from symbolic music scores. The package includes the implementation of a large number of features, which have been developed by a team of experts in musicology, music theory, statistics, and computer science. Additionally, the package allows for the easy creation of custom features using commonly available Python libraries. musif is primarily geared towards processing high-quality musicological data encoded in MusicXML format, but also supports other formats commonly used in music information retrieval tasks, including MIDI, MEI, Kern, and others. We provide comprehensive documentation and tutorials to aid in the extension of the framework and to facilitate the introduction of new and inexperienced users to its usage.
Visualising the Structure of 18th Century Operas: A Multidisciplinary Data Science Approach
2020 24th International Conference Information Visualisation (IV)
Data visualisation is an effective strategy to communicate information. From a multidisciplinary ... more Data visualisation is an effective strategy to communicate information. From a multidisciplinary perspective, applying this methodology (typical of computer science) to humanistic purposes (such as visualising musical, narrative and dramaturgical structure) has shown very promising results. Opera is a complex form of art, whose structure is strongly influenced by dramaturgical and musical aspects, both present in all operatic librettos. Although visualisation methods have been successfully applied in the understanding of music and narrative individually, a combined approach, aimed to jointly visualise both aspects together—by this enhancing opera comprehension—has not yet been developed. With this in mind, through a cooperative methodology of musicology and computer science disciplines, we carry out a data science project aimed to graphically represent the structure of 18th century operas’ libretto structure. The presented approach, based on XML librettos from the Progetto Metastasio, automatically generates a comprehensive graphical representation of the opera structure, based upon musical and dramaturgical information. The schemes developed in this work show all the elements relevant to the 18th century opera structure, and graphically synthesise its complex shape, in order to encourage opera understanding across a large set of users, from general listeners to musicians and finally to musicologists.
SymPlot: A Web-Tool to Visualise Symbolic Musical Data
2020 24th International Conference Information Visualisation (IV)
Some complex musical parameters might be especially difficult to understand for someone with no t... more Some complex musical parameters might be especially difficult to understand for someone with no theoretical expertise in music. Musicians and music scholars alike normally evaluate such parameters visually by departing from scores, which present the musical events at once. Yet for the under-standing of such symbolic representations, musical training is essential, making scores mostly incomprehensible for amateurs. Data visualisation has been applied to meaningfully represent complex musical parameters, thus enabling music amateurs to grasp concepts such as texture or structure. Although scores are one of the "primary" sources to understand music, previous work shows a strong bias towards the visualisation of acoustic data, in detriment of the visualisation of symbolic information. To bridge the gap, we present SymPlot, a web-based open source tool to automatically visualise textural density, scoring, and structure from MusicXML files. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the topic, in this project we have applied the Scrum’s agile methodology, an iterative incremental approach specifically tailored for interdisciplinary projects. The tool, aimed at enhancing musical understanding in amateurs and students, as well as in scholars of other disciplines who need to incorporate music into their discourses, i.e., historians, philologists, etc., enables visualisation of local features at various hierarchical levels, highlighting similarities both within and across scores. Our evaluation of SymPlot—based on a five-level rating-scale test performed by 50 participants—suggests that colours increase users’ understanding of complex musical parameters.
Su propósito es dar a conocer el legado de Jacinto Guerrero, donado por su sobrino Juan González ... more Su propósito es dar a conocer el legado de Jacinto Guerrero, donado por su sobrino Juan González Guerrero al ICCMU, y custodiado en la Biblioteca Histórica “Marqués de Valdecilla”. El legado está compuesto por más de doscientas creaciones musicales, que incluyen partituras manuscritas y editadas, materiales de orquesta, apuntes, bocetos y fragmentos de obras pendientes de ser identificadas, y composiciones de diversos autores que fueron de su propiedad. La obra de Jacinto Guerrero es una puerta a los grandes espectáculos que, de manera muy particular, definieron la modernidad de los años veinte y treinta. Su legado documental refleja también su posición protagonista como empresario, político, pionero del cine español y, ante todo, compositor. Al mismo tiempo que se da a conocer el vasto fondo documental del legado de Jacinto Guerrero, el catálogo de la exposición pretende poner en valor la figura de Jacinto Guerrero, un personaje polifacético que se convirtió en una de las personali...
Un villancico danzado y representado: "Los figurones ridículos en Salamanca
Música y literatura en la península ibérica: 1600-1750 Actas del Congreso Internacional, 1998, ISBN 84-88265-98-0, pág. 495, 1998
El «destierro» de la Zarabanda (1585): Una lectura poética desde la British Library
Revista de musicología, 2020
Owing to its lascivious and dishonest character, the zarabanda was the most popular, and at the s... more Owing to its lascivious and dishonest character, the zarabanda was the most popular, and at the same time the most censored, dance-song in Spanish Golden Age, to the extent that it was forbidden several times by the authorities. This article demonstrates that the first known prohibition was promulgated in 1585, two years after the date traditionally accepted. It then focuses on the study and critical edition of two anonymous contemporary poems dedicated to the «exile of the Zarabanda». Both are preserved in the British Library and, despite being known since the 19th century, they have never been studied or published until now. The first poem is a manuscript elegy written in terza rima entitled «Vihuelas dulces», dated the same year 1585; the second one is a burlesque testament entitled «Desterrada de la corte», a narrative text written in quintillas and published in a chap-book dated 1603. Beyond their undoubted poetic interest, both texts offer substantial information regarding the generalised cultivation of the zarabanda and its context, including quotes of possible refrains and poetic concordances, along with some of the most solid references to a putative American origin for the dance.
Una vida de héroe: la carrera musical en España en la Edad Moderna
Ámbitos artísticos y literarios de sociabilidad en los Siglos de Oro, 2020, ISBN 978-3-967280-05-0, págs. 93-118, 2020
Anuario Musical, 2021
La excepcional acogida de las obras de Pietro Metastasio en el siglo XVIII, en Europa y en la pen... more La excepcional acogida de las obras de Pietro Metastasio en el siglo XVIII, en Europa y en la península ibérica en particular, está ampliamente documentada. Debido a este éxito sin parangón, es posible afirmar que España y Portugal participaron de los gustos y redes artísticas internacionales del momento. Sin embargo, esta internacionalización ha de ser matizada, ya que el repertorio escrito específicamente para la península muestra que las audiencias cortesanas peninsulares pudieron tener expectativas diferentes a las del público de otros teatros en el resto del continente. Por ello, este trabajo investiga en qué formas varió el estilo de cinco compositores de talla internacional —Perez, Galuppi, Jommelli, Conforto y Corselli— a la hora de enfrentarse a los encargos de opera seria para las cortes ibéricas. El análisis estadístico de quince versiones compuestas específicamente para Madrid y Lisboa nos permite evaluar, en comparación con las tendencias generales de un corpus de 2.404...
Conversion issues across musical symbolic representations, such as musicXML, MEI, and humdrum, ar... more Conversion issues across musical symbolic representations, such as musicXML, MEI, and humdrum, are well known. Often, these depend on methodological choices undertaken during the generation and processing of the data. For a better under-standing of this topic, we present a transcription protocol, result of trial and error transcription attempts performed with Finale engraving software, which aims to prevent conversion errors (Verovio 2.1.0 and VHV were taken into account for conversion) from musicXML (export format from Finale) to MEI and **kern (symbolic representations also evaluated).
Readying Cavalli’s Operas for the Stage, 2017
Editing music of the past has always been a major task of musicology. 1 Before reproduction techn... more Editing music of the past has always been a major task of musicology. 1 Before reproduction technology was available, edited volumes were the only means of making accessible the large corpus of historical music that had survived in manuscript form or in very rare prints. The availability of photographic techniques that made it possible to obtain reproductions of original sources did not prevent editorial activity; on the contrary, such activity was boosted by the easier access to the sources. Historically, the editing enterprise was divided into three major phases: I. The early, frustrated attempts in Vienna from around 1750 to 1850 to publish complete works of major "Viennese" composers; 2. The massive flourishing, beginning in the 1850s, of complete editions of canonic composers such as Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and Mozart, as well as earlier authors such as Josquin, Victoria, SchUtz, Monteverdi, and Lully; and 3. The new impulse starting after World War 11, which includes both new, revised editions of composers already represented in the previous phase, and many authors not edited before, such as Telemann, Grieg, Debussy, Schoenberg, and, more recently, Rossini, Verdi, and Busnoys. All three phases involved series devoted to single composers as well as various kinds of anthologies. A quick survey of historical editions listed in New Grove shows that the last phase, starting around 1950, has been by far the most productive. Of some 700 editorial projects initiated in the twentieth century, more than half began in the three decades following the middle of the century. 2 Cavalli missed all three boats. It is not surprising that he was not considered in the first phase, as he was virtually unknown to contemporary scholars. Robert Eitner's pioneering initiative, the editing in 1883 of the first act of 1/ Giasone-1 Many of the ideas expressed in this article are the fruit of five years of teaching, with Juan Jose Carreras, the graduate seminar "Texto-Obra-Edici6n: Introducci6n a la edici6n critica de musica" at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. I am grateful to him and to students we have in common for the inspiration of our discussions. 40
Reinoso [Reynoso], Joseph María
Oxford Music Online, 2001
La cantata española en los albores del setecientos
Cuando un “estribillo” no es un estribillo: sobre la forma del villancico en el siglo XVII
Musica Docta, 2016
This article reviews the legislation related to music education in Spain, from the 1970 to 2016, ... more This article reviews the legislation related to music education in Spain, from the 1970 to 2016, to explain how its progressive integration in the schools curricula has recently been suspended under the believe, expressed in the Parliment by the highest education authority, that certain subjects, music among them, deflect students’ attention from the important matters such as mathematics, science or language.
Este es el Rey que los cielos te envían": música, política y religión en la Barcelona del archiduque Carlos
La ópera en España e Hispanoamérica : actas del Congreso Internacional, la ópera en España e Hispanoamérica : una creación propia : Madrid, 29.XI/3.XII de 1999
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Books by Álvaro Torrente
Papers by Álvaro Torrente