Date of Award

Spring 5-11-2026

Document Type

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Department

Music

Advisor

Dr. Christopher Adler

Abstract

As a constructive method, Johann Joseph Fux’s theory of counterpoint defines a space of musical possibility for contrapuntal composition. I developed a computational method for generating melodies to systematically investigate selected properties of this space. My program recursively generates a tree of all possible cantus firmus melodies of a specified length or all possible first species counterpoints on a given cantus firmus, starting with an empty root node and adding child nodes representing possible musical notes at each step until the specified length is reached. I then investigated several properties of the generated melodies, such as the approximate relationship between the length of a cantus firmus and the number of first species counterpoints possible. This research is a beginning for the categorization of the space of creative musical possibilities and exploration of other properties of music within the framework of Fux’s method.

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