Abstract
Using corpora of 19 common-practice tonal composers, this article uses a variety of similarity metrics including cluster analyses and cross entropy to identify points of particular stylistic uniqueness. Throughout four computational experiments, we find that geography and chronology determine much inter-corpus similarity; however, points of dissimilarity – in particular, dissimilarities between larger groupings of similar composers – are described. Specific properties of stylistic imitations are also investigated and found to be more normative than average. These data are interpreted to arise due to emergent phenomena rather than being driven by individual “creative” composers.
Highlights
Trigrams were used as in Experiment 1, but converted to successions of transpositionally equivalent prime forms rather than scale degrees: instead of compiling a progression as, say, a tonic triad moving to a dominant triad, this method would register that same progression as a major triad moving to another major triad a fifth away. (This was done in order to accommodate the sparser data of single pieces, and was more appropriate to the process described below.) The dataset was grouped into corpora using three methods: identity, chronology, and clustering
While still conforming to the styles and time periods they are imitating, the average piece within a composers’ dataset, within a time period, or within a cluster seems to exhibit some experimentation – some measure of unusual or unexpected events. This experimentation is in stark contrast with the imitations studied in this experiment: when a composer’s aim is to conform to already established norms, the resulting pieces seem to lack the moments of non-conformity that are the hallmark of emergent creativity
The preceding experimental models show that a) surface trigrams provide sufficient data to divide groups of composers together by chronology; and b) that the clusters resulting from this trigram data are coherent in that their constituent compositions share the same surface chord-progression statistics, but are unique in that the constituent composers’ compositional statistics differ significantly from those of other clusters
Summary
How do geographic and pedagogical relationships influence musical style and creativity? This study will investigate the variation between different common-practice tonal composers’ corpora by focusing on one particular musical domain: surface harmonic progressions. We model this domain to show statistical similarities and differences and observe how these similarities correlate to chronology, geography and a composer’s affinity with stylistic schools. By showing such similarities and groupings, we will be able to observe differences – in particular, dissimilarities between larger groupings of similar composers. White interpret stylistic changes as arising not from individual creative acts by singular composers, but rather as phenomena arising from the agglomerated decisions of groups of individuals, or what we will call emergent creativity
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