English

A Visualization of the Classical Musical Tradition

Applications 2017-09-14 v1

Abstract

A study of around 13,000 musical compositions from the Western classical tradition is carried out, spanning 33 major composers from the Baroque to the Romantic, with a focus on the usage of major/minor key signatures. A 2-dimensional chromatic diagram is proposed to succinctly visualize the data. The diagram is found to be useful not only in distinguishing style and period, but also in tracking the career development of a particular composer.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.04038,
  title  = {A Visualization of the Classical Musical Tradition},
  author = {Yang-Hui He},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.04038},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

9 page, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:40:59.448Z