George’s Compositions with Python, Abjad, and Lilypond

Current version: v1.0.9

Warning

This site is about work in progress. Although these are compositions, they are related to my work in an ongoing composition class and should be viewed as sketches toward a bigger work.

This documentation tree is the working home for the technical report. The target format is an ArXiv-style paper, but the material is organized here first as Sphinx documents so the report can evolve in smaller pieces. For now, distribution of this report is via Figshare at doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31827391

If this repository or the accompanying report is useful in your own work, please consider citing it.

@article{Thiruvathukal2026,
  author = "George K. Thiruvathukal",
  title = "{Music Before Composition using Python and Abjad/LilyPond: Life Beyond Notation Software}",
  year = "2026",
  month = "3",
  url = "https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Composition_using_Python_and_Abjad_LilyPond_Life_Beyond_Notation_Software/31827391",
  doi = "10.6084/m9.figshare.31827391.v1"
}

Technical Report

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Background and Tooling
• System Architecture
• Common Pipeline
• Case Study I: Modus Operandi for Piano
• Case Study II: Jazz Rhythmic Patterns
• Case Study III: Algo Rhythms Quartet No. 1
• Case Study IV: Algo Rhythms Quartet No. 2
• Case Study V: Algorithmic Scaffold
• Case Study VI: Bird Im-Migration
• Case Study VII: Bird Im-Migration Ensemble
• Case Study VIII: We Choose the Moon, We Choose Earth
• Configuration and Parameterization
• Build, Render, and Release Engineering
• Detailed Discussion of Score Behavior
• Limitations
• Future Work
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Repository Map
• Appendix B: Selected Configurations
• Appendix C: Selected Code Listings