A Geometric Approach to PCSet Similarity

IN A 1990 ARTICLE, Eric J. Isaacson compared and evaluated a number of efforts by well-known music theorists to construct a meaningful measure of pcset similarity based on interval-class content (Isaacson 1990). Though Isaacson's criteria ultimately led him to dismiss each of these efforts, I found the results of one such measure, David Lewin's REL2, promising enough to warrant further investigation. My attempt to visualize the mechanics of Lewin's function resulted in a seminar paper in which I evaluated Isaacson's work and proposed a different similarity measure, cos O(X, T), that has the benefit of being easily grasped at an informal level and at the same time easily generalized on a more formal level.1 Since this previously unpublished work has served as a source for several authors since, I am grateful to Perspectives of New Music for this