Statistical characteristics of tonal harmony: A corpus study of Beethoven’s string quartets

Fabian C Moss, Markus Neuwirth, Daniel Harasim and Martin Rohrmeier

PLOS ONE, 2019, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: Tonal harmony is one of the central organization systems of Western music. This article characterizes the statistical foundations of tonal harmony based on the computational analysis of expert annotations in a large corpus. Using resampling methods, this study shows that 1) the rank-frequency distribution of chords resembles a power law, i.e. few chords govern a large proportion of the data; 2) chord transitions are referential and chord predictability is significantly affected by distinguished chord features; 3) tonal harmony conveys directedness in time; and 4) tonal harmony operates differently at the hierarchical levels of chords and keys. These results serve to characterize tonal harmony on empirical grounds and advance the methodological state-of-the-art in digital musicology.

Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0217242

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217242

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