scholarly journals The evolution of Western tonality: a corpus analysis of 24,000 songs from 190 composers over six centuries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pu Huang ◽  
Mark Wilson ◽  
Dustin Mayfield-Jones ◽  
Viktoriya Coneva ◽  
Margaret Frank ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Self Organizing Map ◽  
Digital Interface ◽  
Pitch Class ◽  
Linear Interval ◽  
Western Classical Music

The corpus of Western music offers the chance to analyze trends in its evolution. Here, we analyze greater than 24,000 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) transcriptions of Western classical music from 197 composers spanning from the 15th to 20th centuries. The unique file format of MIDI files (notes of discrete frequencies turning “on” and “off” at specific times) allows us to statistically quantify note usage with respect to pitch class and intervals. We first perform a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on pitch class and show that the data creates a ring. Songs strongly associated with a particular key fall on the ring, whereas highly chromatic and atonal works fall in the center, revealing that the evolution of Western music is constrained by the circle of fifths. We then examine interval usage. Discriminant analysis on composer identity reveals that a major source of evolutionary change is incremental and linear. Interval usage predicts individual composer identity at levels above chance. A Self-Organizing Map (SOM) reveals four major groups of composers with similar tonal styles. These groups are loosely based on traditional musical eras, but reveal unexpected continuity between co-existing schools of composers.

The missing fundamentals of harmonic theory: Chord roots and their ambiguity in arrangements of jazz standards

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492110629
Author(s):  
Richard Parncutt ◽  
Lazar Radovanovic
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Digital Interface ◽  
Psychological Reality ◽  
Jazz Pedagogy ◽  
Virtual Pitch ◽  
Musical Chords ◽  
Original Songs ◽  
Western Classical Music ◽  
Psychological Experiments

Since Lippius and Rameau, chords have roots that are often voiced in the bass, doubled, and used as labels. Psychological experiments and analyses of databases of Western classical music have not produced clear evidence for the psychological reality of chord roots. We analyzed a symbolic database of 100 arrangements of jazz standards (musical instrument digital interface [MIDI] files from midkar.com and thejazzpage.de ). Selection criteria were representativeness and quality.The original songs had been composed in the 1930s and 1950s, and each file had a beat track. Files were converted to chord progressions by identifying tone onsets near beat locations (±10% of beat duration). Chords were classified as triads (major, minor, diminished, suspended) or seventh chords (major–minor, minor, major, half-diminished, diminished, and suspended) plus extra tones. Roots that were theoretically less ambiguous were more often in the bass or (to a lesser extent) doubled. The root of the minor triad was ambiguous, as predicted (conventional root or third). Of the sevenths, the major–minor had the clearest root. The diminished triad was often part of a major–minor seventh chord; the half-diminished seventh, of a dominant ninth. Added notes (“tensions”) tended to minimize dissonance (roughness or inharmonicity). In arrangements of songs from the 1950s, diminished triads and sevenths were less common, and suspended triads more common, relative to the 1930s. Results confirm the psychological reality of chord roots and their specific ambiguities. Results are consistent with Terhardt’s virtual pitch theory and the idea that musical chords emerge gradually from cultural and historic processes. The approach can enrich music theory (including pitch-class set analysis) and jazz pedagogy.

scholarly journals Ontology of Time as a Deconstruction of Space. An essay on the Philosophy of Byzantine music

Conatus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Risto Solunchev
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Western Music ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Musical Ontology ◽  
Western Classical Music

In this paper the author examines the ontology of Byzantine music in its self, its aesthetical ground, the philosophical and cultural principles of creation, its episteme, the epistemological field that produced its forms from the 12th till the 14th century, and why that musical ontology hasn’t change through the centuries. The paper discusses in partucular Ernst Bloch’s view that the only evolutionary expression of the Absolute spirit as far as music is concerned, is Western classical music. The author claims that the Western and the Byzantine music stand for two totally distinct and diverse ontologies of the musical being, something that Bloch seems to overlook; this, according to the author, is mostly due to the different systems of representation that have been used, and especially the representational ideas of the time-space relation. The author supports the view that while Western music is spatially-modeled, Byzantine music is time-modeled.

Chromaticism

Lyric Cousins ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Western Classical Music

This chapter examines the uses of chromaticism in music and poetry. Chromaticism is a concept drawn from Western Classical music, and refers to the tonal or harmonic variations in terms of colour. Chromaticism is guilty of revealing how porous the boundaries are between a work of art and the social conditions under which that work was produced. But it also reveals something about the musical project itself. But the concept goes much further than that. In the context of Western music and poetry, ‘chromatic’ can mean not merely what is formally disobedient, but more broadly whatever is put in the poem for sensory, rather than grammatical or denotative, reasons. Chromaticism represents a principle of ‘give’ — of flavour, or even of deviation — within poetic language, and this principle has a number of aspects.

scholarly journals Voicelikeness as Discursive Strategy: An Instrumental Masterclass Case Study

2020 ◽  
pp. 102986492092668
Author(s):  
Kristine Anne Healy ◽  
Graham R. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Single Case Study ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Western Classical Music

To play a musical instrument in the way that one would sing is a goal that has been shared and documented by performers of Western classical music for several centuries. It is still common to hear performers in the 21st century encouraging each other to aspire to performance ideals that are linked to aspects of vocality. Taking voicelikeness not as an identifiable property of sound but rather as a social construction, this study investigates what an instrumental musician can do when they invoke the notion of voicelikeness, using discourse analysis to probe data from a single case study of a flute masterclass. We contend that, while the “truth” about any one instrumentalist’s claim to vocality may be impossible to verify, observing the ways in which such a claim is built up, shared, and defended can reveal the musical values that are being shaped and disseminated by musicians in a given set of circumstances. Applying a discourse approach to the analysis of an actual social encounter exposes how an instrumental musician can draw upon existing ideas about the voice to construct ideal musical practice. We conclude that stories of voicelikeness in discourse amongst instrumental musicians are not only about making a sound that is in some way vocal, they can also be used to transmit the norms of classical music performance from expert performer to developing performer.

Being True to Works of Music

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Dodd
Keyword(s):  
Work Performance ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Christine Korsgaard ◽  
Historical Authenticity ◽  
Constitutive Norm ◽  
Western Classical Music

This book argues that the so-called ‘authenticity debate’ about the performance of works of Western classical music has tended to focus on a side issue. While much has been written about the desirability (or otherwise) of historical authenticity—roughly, performing works as they would have been performed, under ideal conditions, in the era in which they were composed—the most fundamental norm governing our practice of work performance is, in fact, another kind of kind of authenticity altogether. This is interpretive authenticity: being faithful to the performed work by virtue of evincing a profound, far-reaching, or sophisticated understanding of it. While, in contrast to other performance values, both score compliance authenticity (being true to the work by obeying its score) and interpretive authenticity are valued for their own sake in performance, only the latter is a constitutive norm of the practice in the sense introduced by Christine Korsgaard. This has implications for cases in which the demands of these two kinds of authenticity conflict with each other. In cases of genuine such conflict, performers should sacrifice a little score compliance for the sake of making their performance more interpretively authentic.

scholarly journals Associations Between Music Training and the Dynamics of Writing Music by Hand

2020 ◽  
pp. 102986492097214
Author(s):  
Aurélien Bertiaux ◽  
François Gabrielli ◽  
Mathieu Giraud ◽  
Florence Levé
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Musical Score ◽  
Music Training ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Music Recognition ◽  
High Level ◽  
Bottom To Top ◽  
Western Classical Music

Learning to write music in the staff notation used in Western classical music is part of a musician’s training. However, writing music by hand is rarely taught formally, and many musicians are not aware of the characteristics of their musical handwriting. As with any symbolic expression, musical handwriting is related to the underlying cognition of the musical structures being depicted. Trained musicians read, think, and play music with high-level structures in mind. It seems natural that they would also write music by hand with these structures in mind. Moreover, improving our understanding of handwriting may help to improve both optical music recognition and music notation and composition interfaces. We investigated associations between music training and experience, and the way people write music by hand. We made video recordings of participants’ hands while they were copying or freely writing music, and analysed the sequence in which they wrote the elements contained in the musical score. The results confirmed experienced musicians wrote faster than beginners, were more likely to write chords from bottom to top, and they tended to write the note heads first, in a flowing fashion, and only afterwards use stems and beams to emphasize grouping, and add expressive markings.

scholarly journals Linking musical metaphors and emotions evoked by the sound of classical music

2021 ◽  
pp. 030573562199123
Author(s):  
Simon Schaerlaeken ◽  
Donald Glowinski ◽  
Didier Grandjean
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Mixed Effects Models ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Linear Mixed Effects ◽  
Generalized Linear Mixed Effects ◽  
Perceptual Characteristics ◽  
Valence And Arousal ◽  
Western Classical Music

Musical meaning is often described in terms of emotions and metaphors. While many theories encapsulate one or the other, very little empirical data is available to test a possible link between the two. In this article, we examined the metaphorical and emotional contents of Western classical music using the answers of 162 participants. We calculated generalized linear mixed-effects models, correlations, and multidimensional scaling to connect emotions and metaphors. It resulted in each metaphor being associated with different specific emotions, subjective levels of entrainment, and acoustic and perceptual characteristics. How these constructs relate to one another could be based on the embodied knowledge and the perception of movement in space. For instance, metaphors that rely on movement are related to emotions associated with movement. In addition, measures in this study could also be represented by underlying dimensions such as valence and arousal. Musical writing and music education could benefit greatly from these results. Finally, we suggest that music researchers consider musical metaphors in their work as we provide an empirical method for it.

Predicting emotions in music using the onset curve

2021 ◽  
pp. 030573562110316
Author(s):  
Elena Saiz-Clar ◽  
Miguel Ángel Serrano ◽  
José Manuel Reales
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Score ◽  
Musical Note ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Frequency Domains ◽  
Complete Set ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between parameters extracted from the musical stimuli and emotional response has been traditionally approached using several physical measures extracted from time or frequency domains. From time-domain measures, the musical onset is defined as the moment in that any musical instrument or human voice issues a musical note. The onsets’ sequence in the performance of a specific musical score creates what is known as the onset curve (OC). The influence of the structure of OC on the emotional judgment of people is not known. To this end, we have applied principal component analysis on a complete set of variables extracted from the OC to capture their statistical structure. We have found a trifactorial structure related to activation and valence dimensions of emotional judgment. The structure has been cross-validated using different participants and stimuli. In this way, we propose the factorial scores of the OC as a reliable and relevant piece of information to predict the emotional judgment of music.

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