Visualization of composer relationships using implicit data graphs

Abstract

Relationships between classical music composers are known due to explicit historic material, for instance the friendship between Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as the influence of the latter on Ludwig van Beethoven. While Haydn and Mozart were critics of each others work, Mozart and Beethoven probably never met in person. In spite of that there is an impact on especially the early music of Beethoven. While relationships between well-known composers like the mentioned ones are investigated, it can also be of historic interest to know the roles less-known composers played. Some of them might have a part in a famous persons work but were not further analyzed given the fact that there have been many composers and no hints given to researchers indicating which person would be worth studying. In this work we develop an approach to visually hint possible relationships among a large number of composers. Detailed historic knowledge is not taken into account; the hints are only based on the composer works as well as their lifetimes in order to guess directions of influence.