Associate Professor Ève Poudrier, Music
The first song of the volume from Ernest Gagnon (1865), “À la claire fontaine” with the encoding in kern in the left window and the graphic representation in the right window on Verovio Humdrum Viewer
Through computer-assisted analysis of several collections of Francophone folk songs, this Digital Scholarship Incubator Grant supported project seeks to unveil aspects of text-music interaction and creativity in traditional music making. The DiSI-funded project consists of encoding a set of 104 songs with variants collected by Ernest Gagnon (1834–1915), folklorist and composer, and published as “Chansons Populaires du Canada” in 1865. The encoding will allow for computational analysis of melodic features and characteristics pertaining to the interaction of poetic text and music. The larger goal of the project is to promote creative engagement with French-Canadian musical heritage through deeper understanding of processes in the building of repertories across Francophone communities in North America. The use of digital methods in music research has yet to be integrated into higher education curricula. This project will contribute to students’ familiarization of research methodology and the building of skills that may become an essential part of their future activities.
Awarded a 2025 – 2026 Digital Scholarship Incubator Grant. Presented by DiSA, the grant support Faculty of Arts researchers integrating digital methods into their scholarship through funding and in kind support.
Dr. Poudrier is an Associate Professor in music theory at the School of Music of the University of British Columbia, where she teaches courses on compositional practice in the 18th and 19th centuries, graphic linear analysis, music psychology, Francophone music, and digital technology in music research and creation. Her research has been presented at interdisciplinary conferences in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, and published in Music Perception, Empirical Musicology Review, Action, Perception & Cognition, and the Journal of New Music Research. Her current projects focus on empirical aesthetics — specifically the experience of rhythmic polyphony and the aesthetics of complexity — as well as the folk music of French Canada, combining close study, computer-aided musicology, and behavioural experimentation. Research tools, music data, and publications can be accessed at https://polyrhythm.humdrum.org.
Read more about Dr. Poudrier’s novel techniques on DiSA’s features page here.