Thematic fame, melodic originality, and musical zeitgeist: A biographical and transhistorical content analysis

Abstract

15,618 musical themes by 479 classical composers were selected from H. Barlow and S. Morgenstern’s (1948, 1976) thematic dictionaries to determine whether the fame of a musical theme is a function of melodic originality and the composer’s concurrent creative productivity and whether melodic originality is a function of historical time and composer’s age. A citation measure was used to define the fame of the themes, and a computerized content analysis of 2-note transition possibilities was used to operationalize melodic originality relative to both the repertoire and the zeitgeist at time of composition. The study controlled for form, medium, work size, competition, and the composer’s lifetime productivity. A multiple regression analysis showed that thematic fame is an inverted-J function of repertoire melodic originality, a J-function of zeitgeist melodic originality, and a positive function of creative productivity. Repertoire melodic originality is a positive function of historical time and an inverted backwards- J function of the composer’s age, whereas zeitgeist melodic originality is a positive linear function of the composer’s age. (28 ref)