What Paul Does

Since 2012, I have been working with a research group in the Music Department of Bristol University, writing computer programs to help study medieval church chant, particularly that developed and used by Christians in the Iberian Peninsula . This music is preserved in manuscripts which were written mainly in the 10th and 11th centuries, but the notation does not tell us exactly which notes to sing, so it is not possible to study the music in terms of notes and musical intervals.

However, the notation is very rich, in the sense that it uses a wide range of symbols which are clearly used in a very consistent fashion, although we do not understand the the full meaning of the symbols. What we can do is study the way the musical symbols are grouped into patterns, and how those patterns relate to the text of the chant. This is an ideal task for a computer! That's where we started in 2012, and we are still finding new things to do!