The Sensibility Characteristics of Composers Observed within Music Criticisms:

Extracting Sensibility Words Using

Abstract

In order to highlight conceptual features and to examine the relations to composers (musicians) evaluated by music critics, we focus on sensibility words and word phrases that describe composers and analyze them using a quantitative approach. We analyze the complete thirteen-volume set of "POLYPHONE", which is a highly respected journal of musical criticism within Japan. Each article was categorized according to seven groups based on seven most frequently occurring composers within all the articles; namely, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, J.S.Bach, Debussy, and Schonberg, in descending order of frequency. We characterize the elements of sensibility linked to each composer concept by analyzing sensibility expressions, frequent sensibility words employed at the vocabulary level, and the usage features characteristic of each composer.