Harmonic structures of Beethoven quartets: a complex network approach

Theo Frottier (), Bertrand Georgeot () and Olivier Giraud ()
Additional contact information
Theo Frottier: Université de Toulouse,CNRS, UPS
Bertrand Georgeot: Université de Toulouse,CNRS, UPS
Olivier Giraud: Université Paris Saclay, CNRS, LPTMS

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2022, vol. 95, issue 7, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract We propose a complex network approach to the harmonic structure underpinning western tonal music. From a database of Beethoven’s string quartets, we construct a directed network whose nodes are musical chords and edges connect chords following each other. We show that the network is scale-free and has specific properties when ranking algorithms are applied. We explore the community structure and its musical interpretation, and propose statistical measures stemming from network theory allowing to distinguish stylistically between periods of composition. Our work opens the way to a network approach of structural properties of tonal harmony. Graphicabstract

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00368-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:95:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1140_epjb_s10051-022-00368-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10051

DOI: 10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00368-z

Access Statistics for this article

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems is currently edited by P. Hänggi and Angel Rubio

More articles in The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems from Springer, EDP Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().