Le 29 juin 2017
de 11h30 à 12h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3204
Séance - The Second Viennese School (II): Pairing Schoenberg and Webern
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Marcin Strzelecki
Musical style is a term used commonly, being at the same time defined in various ways. From a cognitive point of view, musical style is a particularly perceptible quality. With the use of large music databases, it is possible to search for similarities between musical phenomena of different times and locations. Such an extensive approach toward style leads to significant consequences. Similarities may be the result of chance, as well as indicate a common natural grounds for musical creation, e.g. psycho-acoustic constrains. This may be an important contribution to the discussion on musical universals. Modern computational stylometry takes advantage of the idea of multidimensional scaling. Stylistic phenomena are treated as objects located in a spatial model whose particular dimensions are determined by specific psychoacoustic music features. The distance between objects is interpreted as a measure of the difference. Conversely, proximity means stylistic similarity. In an experiment, thousands of music excerpts from all around the world where subjected to qualitative analysis. Perceptible musical features were extracted, such as generalised properties of melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, and micro and macro-formal qualities. Objects located in the spatial model were clustered. Armed with such methods, one may compare stylistic qualities of music from various points of view, for example as references inside a single piece of music, as a stylistic development within an individual composer’s lifetime, works of groups of composers, works within one stylistic genre, music of a particular era, cultural circle or a geographical region.
