Tonalities ontology

The ontology module TONALITIES, which is part of the Polifonia Ontology Network, represents concepts and relationships relating to music analysis and music-theoretical knowledge. The ontology aims at capturing the inner organization of musical works described on the basis of cadences, ambitus, imitation points, alterations, chromaticism, roots, harmonic progressions, etc. The strategy adopted is not to provide a single authoritative model, but rather to let coexist different models corresponding to different music-theoretical perspectives. This multifaceted approach helps to understand how different theoretical viewpoints, for instance on modality or tonality, affect the analytical understanding of the same musical work. The different theoretical models are imported into a main ontology that provides classes related to composers, musical works and their encoding, theoretical models and their analytical application.