The situation becomes more difficult when the division of labour becomes institutionalized. The investigation of a mathematical model can be done more effectively by a mathematician, who himself might not be able to judge its applicability in music theory. The RUBETTE-concept provides a suitable means to support the interdisciplinary communication. As an example, we mention Anja Fleischer’s investigations into metrical coherence, that are empirically based on the work with the MetroRUBETTE (cf. [2], [1]). In a first step, Mazzola defined a model of metrical regularity with mathematical intuition and tested it on a small corpus of examples. However, the musictheoretical meaning of these structures was still unclear, when an algorithm was implemented. Later on, Anja Fleischer (and other RUBATO-experimenters as well) had a closer look on the resulting inner metrical weights of many musical pieces and compared them to other analytical structures, especially to the outer bar structure. Various types of correspondence between the two turned out to provide insight into the general phenomenon of metricity and meanwhile suggested a refinement of the tools for inner metrical analysis. In this particular case the division of labour and the communication through the mediating software worked quite well and lead to an effect of interdisciplinary synergy. Furthermore, the concept of metrical coherence exemplifies the hermeneutic strategy mentioned above: to detect global coherence. In this specific case the coherence occurs between outer metrical bar structure – an accepted standard in music theory, and inner metrical structure – a mathematical analysis of the pure onset structure that deliberately neglects any information concerning bar lines and time signature.

In this discussion we already reached a meeting point of Mathematical and Computer-aided Music Theory. The role of the RUBETTE-author is somehow located between mere service and working (Mathematical) Music Theory. He has an initial idea and provides tools intended to better understand his idea. He creates these tools not just in private, but invites other researchers as well to develop Music theory in collaboration. The interface to performance experiments provides another channel of communication. Users may include their aesthical judgements about artificial performances produced by the PerformanceRUBETTE on the basis of analytical weights in order to decide about their scientific interest in a specific mathematical model. ⁷

Now recall the two fundamental directions of interest in General Music Theory: interest toward ideosyncratic structures and interest toward systematization. Analysis of a given piece is a hermeneutic activity. The ideosyncratic structure of a piece is typically reflected in specific correspondences of local analyses. In other words: The analyst collects global knowledge about the piece with the intention to construct a global object from it. The existing analytical RUBETTEs are specialized tools for local analysis⁸

. The RUBATO concept includes the idea of a communicative platform for this hermeneutic activity. As a consequence, another research interest enters the field: Software Integration Techniques.

A single computer-aided music-theoretical experiment essentially consists in