In Bach's chorale harmonizations, are suspensions more
common in the alto voice or in the tenor voice?
Approach:
Rather than use all 371 chorales, we will use a sample
of just 16 randomly-selected chorales.
First we extract the alto-voice embellishment information
using the EXTRACT command.
extract -i '*alto' chor*.hrm > alto
Next, extract the tenor-voice embellishment information.
extract -i '*tenor' chor*.hrm > tenor
Now count the number of suspensions in the alto using
the GREP -c command.
grep -c 'sus' alto
Answer: 60 suspensions.
And count the number of suspensions in the tenor:
grep -c 'sus' tenor
Answer: 21 suspensions.
Conclusion:
There are many more suspensions in the alto voice compared with
the tenor voice in this small sample of Bach's part-writing.