Visible Humour — Seeing P.D.Q. Bach’s Musical Humour Devices in The Short-Tempered Clavier on the Spiral Array Space (original) (raw)

Abstract

We explore the use of the Spiral Array spatial visualization of tonal evolution through time for the visual analysis of P.D.Q. Bach’s The Short-Tempered Clavier. In particular, we analyze situations in which we can see some of the humour devices abstracted in an earlier study by David Huron. We conclude that although we can see a good number of Schickele’s humour devices — such as incongruent styles, musically improbable tonality and harmony shifts, and excessive repetition — we do not yet have sufficient information to form a robust computer-based method for detecting musical humour.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Epstein Dep of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hsieh Dep of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, Los Angeles, California, USA
    Elaine Chew
  2. Computer Science Department, University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, Los Angeles, California, USA
    Alexandre François

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  1. Elaine Chew
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  2. Alexandre François
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Abteilung III Akustik und Musiktechnologie, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Tiergartenstr. 1, 10785, Berlin, Germany
    Timour Klouche
  2. Departament de Teoria i Composicio i Direccio, Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya, C. Padilla 155-Edifici L’Auditori, 08013, Barcelona, Spain
    Thomas Noll

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chew, E., François, A. (2009). Visible Humour — Seeing P.D.Q. Bach’s Musical Humour Devices in The Short-Tempered Clavier on the Spiral Array Space. In: Klouche, T., Noll, T. (eds) Mathematics and Computation in Music. MCM 2007. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 37. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04579-0\_2

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