publications | Ana Llorens

2026

Recommendations for building a harmonic corpus

Ana Llorens, Mathieu Giraud, Mark Gotham, and 4 more authors

In Representing Harmony: Challenges and Prospects for Computational Musicology, 2026
A proposal for a flexible and extensible encoding standard

Johannes Hentschel, Ana Llorens, Mark Gotham, and 3 more authors

In Representing Harmony: Challenges and Prospects for Computational Musicology, 2026
Luigi Boccherini’s vocal works

Ana Llorens

In The Cambridge Companion to Boccherini, 2026
Pau Casals and “Après un rêve”: From Concert Stage to Studio

Ana Llorens, Eva Moreda, Inja Stanovic, and 1 more author

2026

2025

Critical edition of F. Corselli’s Achille in Sciro

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2025
The Cambridge History of Music in Spain

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2025

2024

Critical edition of Ruperto Chapí’s Piano Trio

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2024
Critical edition of 3,000 opera arias

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2024
Alessandro nell’Indie (1730-1831)

Ana Llorens, and Valentina Anzani

In Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte, 2024

DOI
Adriano in Siria (1732-1828)

Ana Llorens, and Tatiana Aráez

In Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte, 2024

DOI
Artaserse (1730-1850)

Ana Llorens, and Gorka Rubiales

In Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte, 2024

DOI
Didone abbandonata (1724-1832)

Ana Llorens, and Gorka Rubiales

In Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte, 2024

DOI
Demofoonte (1733-1821)

Ana Llorens, Nicola Usula, and Gorka Rubiales

In Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte, 2024

DOI
Didone arias database

Ana Llorens, Valentina Anzani, Tatiana Ar’\aez Santiago, and 3 more authors

2024

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2023

In the quest for variety: analysis of performances of the prelude from Bach’s cello suite no. 4

Ana Llorens, and Carlota Martínez-Escamilla

Rivista della Società Italiana di Analisi Musical, 30/1, 2023

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Variety in music performance has been deemed a natural necessity on the part of practitioners [Godlovitch, 1988; Margulis, 2014; Smith, 1993]. In fact, a strive for variety has been noticed both in terms of performative patterns that vary throughout a given interpretation [Rink, Spiro, and Gold 2011] and across the multiple performances of a given piece [Fabian 2015; Fabian and Ornoy 2009; Llorens 2018; 2021b; Ornoy 2008]. However, in most studies its discussion has been relegated to tangential commentaries, and very rarely has it been the focus of research. To fill this lacuna, this article investigates the interpretive techniques by which eighteen cellists create a sense of variety in a highly regular musical context: the Prelude from J. S. Bach’s Suite for cello solo no. 4 in E flat major. The analysis addresses three main issues in each recording: a) the varying durational proportions between the various notes within each bar and the patterns that emerge from it; b) the importance of dynamics in supporting, compensating, or even overruling the effect of a); and c) the relatively unstable approaches to the intonation of specific intervals in the Prelude. Ultimately, this research contributes new case studies to the theorisation of variety in the context of pseudo-perpetual motion music, unequivocally positing performance as a critical element in music theory.
Una base empírica para la historia de la interpretación musical: Segovia y Bream en la segunda mitad del siglo XX

Ana Llorens

Súmula. Revista de Teoría y Análisis Musical, 2023

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The historiography of musical interpretation has usually presented Andrés Segovia and Julian Bream as opposed figures, as regards both their performance styles and their conceptions of the repertoire for the guitar. To that aim it has simply reproduced descriptions that overlook these musicians’ sounds. In fact, it is no surprise that their recordings of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Fantasía para un gentilhombre —respectively from 1958 and 1987— bear witness to a different reality. Despite his exaggeration of the durational differences between the note values in some motifs, Segovia’s agogic resources appear to respond to phraseological, metric, and harmonic preoccupations omitted in the literature. For his part, Bream, who becomes more irregular in constant-figuration passages, seems to adopt some techniques of historically informed performance. Through the analysis of the duration of notes, beats, sentences, and periods in both renditions, this case study demonstrates, thus, that a specific rendition may be the result of a complex web of motivations and influences. Ultimately, it exemplifies the necessity for the empirical analysis of musical performance in order to detect and understand the nuances that would otherwise remain silent.
Optimizing feature extraction for symbolic music

Federico Llorens, Martín Serrano, and Álvaro Torrente

In Proceedings of Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC) 2023, 2023

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In this work, we introduce musif, a Python package that facilitates the automatic extraction of features from symbolicmusic scores. The package includes the implementation ofa large number of features, which have been developed bya team of experts in musicology, music theory, statistics,and computer science. Additionally, the package allowsfor the easy creation of custom features using commonly available Python libraries. musifis primarily geared towards processing high-quality musicological data encodedin MusicXML format, but also supports other formats commonly used in music information retrieval tasks, includingMIDI, MEI, Kern, and others. We provide comprehensivedocumentation and tutorials to aid in the extension of theframework and to facilitate the introduction of new andinexperienced users to its usage.
Optimizing feature extraction for symbolic music

Federico Simonetta, Ana Llorens, Martín Serrano, and 2 more authors

In Proceedings of the 24th ISMIR Conference, Milan, Italy, 5–9 November 2023, 2023

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This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of existing feature extraction tools for symbolic music and contrasts their performance to determine the set of features that best characterizes the musical style of a given music score. In this regard, we propose a novel feature extraction tool, named musif, and evaluate its efficacy on various repertoires and file formats, including MIDI, MusicXML, and **kern. Musif approximates existing tools such as jSymbolic and music21 in terms of computational efficiency while attempting to enhance the usability for custom feature development. The proposed tool also enhances classification accuracy when combined with other sets of features. We demonstrate the contribution of each set of features and the computational resources they require. Our findings indicate that the optimal tool for feature extraction is a combination of the best features from each tool rather than those of a single one. To facilitate future research in music information retrieval, we release the source code of the tool and benchmarks.

2022

Pietro Metastasio’s Operatic Storm: Texts and Musics for Didone abbandonata, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse, Adriano in Siria, and Demofoonte

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2022

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Early recorded structures: non-organic forms in Brahms’s cello sonatas as performed by Feuermann and Casals

Ana Llorens

In Early Sound Recordings: Academic Research and Practice, 2022

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Literature on the impact of performers’ manipulations of sound on the projection and inference of structural relations in music has tended to focus on phrase arching techniques, whereby musicians reportedly signal phrase boundaries through coordinated decreases in tempo and dynamics (Todd 1983). As some scholars have recently noted, this and related theories can be adequately applied to performances under the influence of structuralist views on musical form only (Cook 2009, Fabian 2014). Early recordings offer, on the contrary, invaluable insights into pre-structuralist, approaches to musical form, as materialised in performance. Through the analysis of select renditions of the first movements of Brahms’s cello sonatas–by Emmanuel Feuermann and Theo van der Pas (1934) and Pau Casals and Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1936)–this chapter examines how timbre, intonation, and microtiming can also play a role in the creation, projection, and inference of structural relations. Taking the conclusions further, it ultimately exemplifies how the use of early recordings in contemporary research can contribute to general music theory by prompting a reconceptualisation of musical form as eminently constructed, diachronically contingent, and sound dependent, and of chamber music as unbalanced, potentially asynchronous practice.
The Musicology Lab: Teamwork and the musicological toolbox

Álvaro Torrente, and Ana Llorens

In Music Encoding Conference Proceedings 2021, 19–22 July, 2021, 2022

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Musicology is a small discipline within the wide spectrum of human knowledge, yet it is already divided into various branches, each with its own societies, conferences, journals, jargons, degrees, prejudices, ..., and jobs. Although they share their object of investigation– "the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon" –, these branches very often ignore one another. Research in musicology is mostly a solitary task, as investigations, papers, and publications are commonly signed by single authors, in contrast with STEM disciplines where teamwork is the rule. This is in part the result of tradition– the "Musico-logical Toolbox" – but also the aftermath of the job market and financing programs.Large funding schemes such as the European Research Council (ERC) grants are becoming a major disruptive factor in many disciplines in the humanities, including musicology. Scholars in all fields now have the oppor-tunity to build research teams, and most of their members receive their salaries to exclusively work on the project. In other words, we are starting to build what could be called a Musicology Lab, learning along the way how teamwork is reshaping and transforming the Musicological Toolbox, the look and feel of our discipline, the way we work as well as the way we publish and disseminate our results.This paper presents some of the key features of the ERC Didone project, one of its principal tasks being to create a digitally encoded corpus of some 3,000 arias in MusicXML format from about 180 musical settings of a small number of opera librettos by Pietro Metastasio. It focuses on some of the project’s research tasks, emphasizing how the skills of a team of eighteen scholars with very different expertise – historical musicology, music theory and analysis, cultural history, librettology, archival research, music performance, music engrav-ing, MIR, computer science, and statistical modeling – combine to explore the potential answer(s) to the main research question of the project: How are emotions expressed through music?

2021

Constructing opera seria in the Iberian courts: Metastasian repertoire for Spain and Portugal

Ana Llorens, and Álvaro Torrente

Anuario Musical, 2021

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The exceptional reception of Pietro Metastasio’s works during the eighteenth century, all over Europe and in the Iberian Peninsula in particular, is well documented. Due to that unparalleled success, it is possible to ascertain Spain and Portugal’s participation in international, contemporary tastes and artistic webs, applicable to both composers and performers. However, this internationalisation needs to be nuanced, as some characteristics of the repertoire specifically written for the Peninsula indicate that their court audiences may have had expectations, both social and strictly musical, different from those of the public in opera theatres elsewhere in the continent. In this light, this article investigates in what ways the style of five composers in the international scene —Perez, Galuppi, Jommelli, Conforto, and Corselli— varied when commissioned to write opera seria for the Iberian courts.The statistical analysis of fifteen settings especially written for the court theatres in Madrid and Lisbon, in comparison to the average data extracted from a corpus of 2,404 arias from 126 versions of a select number of Metastasian librettos, allows us to evaluate some particular usages regarding key, metre, tempo, and treatment of the vocal part. In this manner, through quantitative analysis, this article places eighteenth-century Iberian music production and consumption in the context of European opera seria, at the same time that it ultimately sets forth that its unique musical characteristics were also partly dependent on local musical customs, gender stereotypes, and personal idiosyncrasies alike.
The Recorded Brahms Corpus (RBC): A dataset of performative parameters in recordings of Brahms’s cello sonatas

Ana Llorens

Empirical Musicology Review, 2021

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This report describes the open-source Recorded Brahms Corpus (RBC) dataset, as well as the methods employed to extract and process the data. The dataset contains (micro)timing and dynamic data from 21 recordings of Brahms’s Cello Sonatas, Opp. 38 and 99, focusing on note and beat onsets and duration, tempo fluctuations, and dynamic variations. Consistent manual annotation of the corpus in Sonic Visualiser was necessary prior to automatic extraction. Data for each recording and measurement unit are given as TXT files. Scores in various digital formats, the original SV files and diamond-shaped scape plots visualizations of the data are offered too. Expansion of the corpus with further movements of the sonatas, further recordings thereof and other compositions by Brahms is planned. The study of the data may contribute to performance studies and music theory alike.
Brahmsian articulation: Ambiguous and unfixed structures in the cello sonata op. 38

Ana Llorens

Music Theory Online, 2021

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The analysis of the structural repercussions of musicians’ strategies has traditionally focused on their handling of timing and dynamics, not only because of the correlation found in performances between hierarchical phrase structure and coordinated decreases in both parameters —usually referred to as phrase arching (Gabrielsson 1988) or phrase-final lengthening (Todd 1985; Repp 1990)— but also because of these parameters’ easier quantification. However, other parameters, including articulation, can play equally significant roles in the emergence and potential perception of musical structures. The processes of performance and inference are, moreover, so unique to each musician and/or beholder that revisions of traditional approaches to musical form have become necessary. To explore this phenomenon, I study both the score and five recordings of the finale from Brahms’s first cello sonata, op. 38. The junctures where the transition and the recapitulation start are indeterminate. In addition, the piece employs procedures typical of both the sonata and the fugue to produce a formal hybrid that poses significant quandaries to both performers and analysts. Focusing on the selected musicians’ manipulations of articulation, this article aims to determine whether this parameter might, along with timing and dynamics, be relevant in the emergence and perception of formal relations. The study also addresses the ways in which formal ambiguity can be materialized, concealed, and created in performance, ultimately investigating how musical form can, on the basis of its performance, be considered as multivalent.
Understanding expressive intonation: Casals’ Bach beyond conscience

Ana Llorens

Quodlibet, 2021

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Research on intonation has mainly sought for classifying and/or expressive explanations for performers’ strategies. In the field of music psychology and music perception, such explanations have been explored in terms of interval direction, size, or type; in the field of performance analysis, to which this article belongs, investigation on intonation has been not only scarce but also limited to short excerpts. In this context, this article explores Pau Casals’ intonational practice specific to his recording of Bach’s E flat major prelude for solo cello. To do so, on the basis of exact empirical measurements, it places such practice alongside the cellist’s conscious, theoretical recommendations apropos what he called “expressive” string intonation, showing that the interpretation of the latter should is not straightforward. It also proposes several reference points and tuning systems which could serve as models for Casals’ practice and looks for explanations beyond simple interval classification. In this manner, it ultimately proposes a structural function for intonation, in partnership with tempo and dynamics. Similarly, it understands Casals’ intonational practice not as a choice between but as a compromise for multiple options in tuning systems (mostly equal temperament and Pythagorean tuning), reference points (the fundamental note of the chord and the immediately preceding tone), the nature of the compositional materials (harmonic and melodic), and, most importantly, structure and expression.
The analysis of performance and the performance of analysis

Ana Llorens

Quodlibet, 2021

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Una vez Brahms, pero no el mismo Brahms: las sonatas para violonchelo y piano, por Polo y Nebolsin

Ana Llorens

Revista de Musicología, 2021

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Quodlibet: Special issue on Performance Analysis

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2021

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2020

Operatic sources for Demofoonte: Libretti and scores after Metastasio’s "figliuolo"

Ana Llorens, Gorka Rubiales, and Nicola Usula

In Demofoonte come soggetto per il dramma per musica: Johann Adolf Hasse ed altri compositori del Settecento, 2020
SymPlot: A web-tool to visualise symbolic musical data

Paula Muñoz Lago, Ana Llorens, Emilia Parada-Cabaleiro, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Visualisation 2020, 2020

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Some complex musical parameters might be especially difficult to understand for someone with no theoretical expertise in music. Musicians and music scholars alike normally evaluate such parameters visually by departing from scores, which present the musical events at once. Yet for the under-standing of such symbolic representations, musical training is essential, making scores mostly incomprehensible for amateurs. Data visualisation has been applied to meaningfully represent complex musical parameters, thus enabling music amateurs to grasp concepts such as texture or structure. Although scores are one of the "primary" sources to understand music, previous work shows a strong bias towards the visualisation of acoustic data, in detriment of the visualisation of symbolic information. To bridge the gap, we present SymPlot, a web-based open source tool to automatically visualise textural density, scoring, and structure from MusicXML files. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the topic, in this project we have applied the Scrum’s agile methodology, an iterative incremental approach specifically tailored for interdisciplinary projects. The tool, aimed at enhancing musical understanding in amateurs and students, as well as in scholars of other disciplines who need to incorporate music into their discourses, i.e., historians, philologists, etc., enables visualisation of local features at various hierarchical levels, highlighting similarities both within and across scores. Our evaluation of SymPlot –based on a five-level rating-scale test performed by 50 participants– suggests that colours increase’ understanding of complex musical parameters.
’Misero pargoletto’: kinship, taboo and passion in Metastasio’s Demofoonte

Álvaro Torrente, and Ana Llorens

In Demofoonte come soggetto per il dramma per musica: Johann Adolf Hasse ed altri compositori del Settecento, 2020

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2018

Creating musical structure thorough performance: A re-interpretation of Brahms’s cello sonatas

Ana Llorens

University of Cambridge, 2018

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2017

Recorded asynchronies, structural dialogues: Brahms’s Adagio affettuoso, Op. 99ii, in the hands of Casals and Horszowski

Ana Llorens

Music Performance Research, 2017

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Many musicians performing an ensemble work would aim to achieve good, if not perfect, synchronisation of timing for the sake of an effective rendition (McCaleb, 2014). In this respect, Pau Casals and Mieczyslaw Horszowski’s 1935 recording of the second movement of Johannes Brahms’s F major Cello Sonata, Op. 99, is certainly intriguing, as asynchronies between the two instruments are clearly perceptible throughout extensive passages. Questions concerning the rationale behind these temporal discrepancies arise: To what extent did Casals and Horszowski intend not to play together? In what ways can we understand these asynchronies? What are their musical effects? Analysis of timing that focused on the magnitude of the asynchronies as well as on tempo curves and durational patterns employed by the performers in this recording has shed light on the effects, purpose, and meaning of those asynchronies. This article illustrates that the temporal discrepancies between the cello and piano parts are neither the result of chance nor only local expressive devices; rather, they are critical elements in a highly distinctive construction of the Adagio Affettuoso from Brahms’s Op. 99. They attest to an ongoing structural dialogue between the musicians that shapes and paces the piece in unexpected ways, prompting a reconsideration of ensemble playing as affording different, even conflicting attitudes. Furthermore, their potentially structural import leads to a critical broadening of the methods and parameters that music analysis has traditionally acknowledged. On these bases, a fruitful dialogue between music analysis and performance is put forward.

2015

VIII Jornadas de Jóvenes Musicólogos. Libro de Actas

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2015

2014

“Midiendo del tiempo" en la Sonata para cello y piano en Fa mayor, Op. 99, de Brahms: Casals y una variedad proporcionalmente controlada

Ana Llorens

Quodlibet, 2014

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One of the most emphasized elements in descriptions of Pau Casals’ performance style is the so-called "tempo rubato", which was defined by the cellist himself as the continuous ability to “measure” time, taking it from certain notes and giving it back to others such that the overall duration is kept intact. Accounts of his manner of both playing and teaching, also refer to a “sense of proportion” which allegedly governed his use of rubato. Nevertheless, explanations thereof are vague and by no means clear. Furthermore, some of Casals’ pedagogic principles –enunciation of the first note and the need for expressive variety– emerge as contradictory when observed from this perspective. To explore the practical employment of "rubato" and likewise to disclose the potentially structural meaning of this sense of proportion in Casals’ performances, empirical analysis of tempo, beat duration, and agogic divergences between him and the pianist Horszowski will be undertaken, focusing on their recording of the second movement of "Brahms’s Cello Sonata", Op. 99. In this manner, it will be possible to assess to what extent and in what ways the cellist’s theoretical teachings were mirrored in his performance, and thus to understand better his particular style of playing.
Cuestión de dos: los hermanos Fernández Grajal en el Certamen Nacional de Ópera Española

Ana Llorens

In Allegro cum laude: Estudios musicológicos en homenaje a Emilio Casares, 2014

2013

El canto mozárabe y su entorno. Estudios sobre la música de la liturgia viejo hispánica

Ana Llorens (ed.)

2013

2012

Ambivalencias musicales: el Trío para piano, violín y violonchelo de Ruperto Chapí

Ana Llorens

In Ruperto Chapí: Nuevas perspectivas, 2012
Lakatos, un músico de actualidad. Su origen, su presente, su música

Ana Llorens

In Actas del I Encontro Ibero Americano de Jovens Musicologos, 2012

2011

Plácido: más allá de lo visual

Ana Llorens

Jugar con fuego, 2011