VISUALIZING THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC WORKS by WING

One of the major obstacles to appreciating classical music is that extensive training is required to understand musical structure and compositional techniques towards comprehending the thoughts behind the musical work. In this thesis, we propose an innovative visualization solution to reveal the semantic structure in classical orchestral work, such that users can gain insights into musical structure and appreciate the beauty of music. We formulate the semantic structure into macro-level layer interactions, micro-level theme variations, and macro-micro relationship between themes and layers to abstract the complicated construction of a music composition. The visualization has been applied with success in understanding some classical music work as supported by highly promising user study results with the general audience and very positive feedback from music students and experts, demonstrating its effectiveness in conveying the sophistication and beauty of classical music to novice users with informative and intuitive displays.