Where the Altus Could Have Been

Reconstructing a lost partbook voice as a fibre in orbifold voice-leading space

A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions places each four-voice sonority of a motet set whose altus partbook is lost in the orbifold of unordered pitch-class quadruples, where the missing voice traces a loop that meets the singular stratum wherever it would double a surviving part. In seven control motets whose altus survives in a later intabulation, the original altus supplies the missing chord member at 80% of 412 incomplete sonorities against 52% and 49% for two published completions; in the 24 motets with no altus, a single regular completion remains at 288 of 351.

@misc{slop_a2ov3x,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Marek Solheim and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {Where the Altus Could Have Been: Reconstructing a lost partbook voice as a fibre in orbifold voice-leading space},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.a2ov3x},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-where-the-altus-a2ov3x/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}