Arrow of time across five centuries of classical music
dc.contributor.author | González-Espinoza, A | |
dc.contributor.author | Martínez-Mekler, G | |
dc.contributor.author | Lacasa, L | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-06-09T12:53:26Z | |
dc.date.available | 2020-05-26 | |
dc.date.available | 2021-06-09T12:53:26Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020-07-29 | |
dc.identifier.citation | González-Espinoza, Alfredo et al. "Arrow Of Time Across Five Centuries Of Classical Music". Physical Review Research, vol 2, no. 3, 2020. American Physical Society (APS), doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.2.033166. Accessed 9 June 2021. | en_US |
dc.identifier.issn | 2643-1564 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/72436 | |
dc.description.abstract | The concept of time series irreversibility—the degree by which the statistics of signals are not invariant under time reversal—naturally appears in nonequilibrium physics in stationary systems which operate away from equilibrium and produce entropy. This concept has not been explored to date in the realm of musical scores as these are typically short sequences whose time reversibility estimation could suffer from strong finite size effects which preclude interpretability. Here we show that the so-called horizontal visibility graph method—which recently was shown to quantify such statistical property even in nonstationary signals—is a method that can estimate time reversibility of short symbolic sequences, thus unlocking the possibility of exploring such properties in the context of musical compositions. Accordingly, we analyze over 8000 musical pieces ranging from the Renaissance to the early Modern period and show that, indeed, most of them display clear signatures of time irreversibility. Since by construction stochastic processes with a linear correlation structure (such as 1 / f noise) are time reversible, we conclude that musical compositions have a considerably richer structure, that goes beyond the traditional properties retrieved by the power spectrum or similar approaches. We also show that musical compositions display strong signs of nonlinear correlations, that nonlinearity is correlated to irreversibility, and that these are also related to asymmetries in the abundance of musical intervals, which we associate to the narrative underpinning a musical composition. These findings provide tools for the study of musical periods and composers, as well as criteria related to music appreciation and cognition. | en_US |
dc.format.extent | 033166 - 033166 | |
dc.publisher | American Physical Society | en_US |
dc.relation.ispartof | Physical Review Research | |
dc.rights | Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. | |
dc.rights | Attribution 3.0 United States | * |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ | * |
dc.title | Arrow of time across five centuries of classical music | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |
dc.rights.holder | © 2020, The Author(s) | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1103/physrevresearch.2.033166 | |
pubs.issue | 3 | en_US |
pubs.notes | Not known | en_US |
pubs.publication-status | Published | en_US |
pubs.volume | 2 | en_US |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2020-05-26 | |
rioxxterms.funder | Default funder | en_US |
rioxxterms.identifier.project | Default project | en_US |
qmul.funder | Early career fellowship: SIG-NET::Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | en_US |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.