[sbuttgereit]

That takes me back! I did a lot with set theory (music) back in college.

Somewhat related to that, I had a teacher that also worked out a harmonic theoretical framework based on overall degrees of dissonance and consonance which had some relatively interesting properties for analyzing both common practice and later music within the same framework. It had something akin to set theory's interval classes, but rather than representing a pure measurement of scalar intervals, it was measuring relative dissonance of intervals and groups of intervals. The dissonance values were on an arbitrary scale, but the system nonetheless provided an interesting and different perspective on musical constructs and harmonic progression.

At the time I knew the person that put this together, I think it was his thesis that he was writing... I'll have to see what ever became of it (of course, I haven't talked to the guy in over 30 years... but hey... )

[acjohnson55]

Out of curiosity, who was the teacher? I used to study this stuff and may have come across their work.

[sbuttgereit]

I did a quick Google and found him at: https://www.weber.edu/performingarts/shannon_roberts.html

The working paper at the time was called "Global Relative Dissonance Theory" or something to that effect. I think I'll drop him a note and ask about it. My hunch is that it didn't see much interest outside of the school (University of Utah at that time), but I also more or less left any academic music pursuits around that same time so I just might not be in the know.