Global functorial hypergestures over general skeleta for musical performance

Abstract

Musical performance theory using Lagrangian formalism, inspired by physical string theory, has been described in previous research. That approach was restricted to zero-addressed hypergestures of local character, and also to digraph skeleta of simple arrow type. In this article, we extend the theory to hypergestures that are defined functorially over general topological categories as addresses, are global, and are also defined for general skeleta. We also prove several versions of the important Escher Theorem for this general setup. This extension is highly motivated by theoretical and practical musical performance requirements of which we give concrete examples.