Analysis and Synthesis of Palestrina-Style Counterpoint Using Markov Chains

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to computergenerated Palestrina-style counterpoint using probabilistic Markov Chains. It is shown how Markov Chains adequately capture the rules of species counterpoint and how they can be used to synthesize species counterpoint given a cantus firmus. It is also shown how such rules can be inferred from given counterpoint examples.