Skip to main content

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

  • Conference paper
Mathematics and Computation in Music (MCM 2007)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 37))

Included in the following conference series:

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Chew, E.: Towards A Mathematical Model of Tonality. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  • Chew, E., François, A.R.J.: Interactive multi-scale visualizations of tonal evolution in MuSA.RT Opus 2. Computers in Entertainment 3(4), 1–16 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • François, A.R.J.: A hybrid architectural style for distributed parallel processing of generic data streams. In: Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering, Edinburgh, Scotland, pp. 367–376 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Huron, D.: Music-engendered laughter: An analysis of humor devices in PDQ Bach. In: Proc. Of the Intl. Conf. on Music Perception and Cognition, pp. 93–95 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Schickele, P.: The Short-Tempered Clavier — Preludes and Fugues in All the Major and Minor Keys Except for the Really Hard Ones, S. 3.14159, easy as edn., pp. 1807–1742. Theodore Pressor Company, Bryn Mawr

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

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

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04579-0_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04578-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04579-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics