Mathematical Models for Musical Performance

The aim of this article is twofold. On one hand we give an overview, without any pretension of being exhaustive, of some theoretical tool of the modern theory of musical performance. On the other hand we present two mathematical models based on the ideas of Mazzola’s Mathematical Music Theory, that enable to concretely answer typical question on the way a player performs. For instance, now a claim like ”Horowitz has a more local way than Cortot to play Schumann’s ’Träumerei’” has a strong statistical support.