Classifying Musical Genres. Building Musical Form and Genre into BCC: Repurposing LCGFT Terms for Music into the Basic Concepts Classification

Abstract

We investigate how the Basic Concepts Classification (BCC) can best incorporate schedules addressing musical form, genre, and type. We show that the synthetic possibilities within the BCC facilitate the classification of form/genre/type. In particular, many challenges identified in the literature on musical classification are addressed. The BCC also serves to make evident various connections between music and other schedules in BCC.

Phenomenon‐based classification: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…Following on experiments in the use of the BCC for music as part of the “Digging Into the Knowledge Graph” project (https://diggingintodata.org/awards/2016/project/digging-knowledge-graph), further analysis has been underway of how to identify new facets for the classification of musical phenomena and especially to search for a grammar for synthesis of elements of mood or emotional response with aspects of historical period, genre or theme, as well as the more detailed representation of medium of performance (Griscom et al, 2024; Lee & Szostak, 2022; Smiraglia & Szostak, 2020; Szostak, 2019; Szostak & Smiraglia, 2019). One important insight of this research is that many important aspects of music, including genre (see Lee & Szostak, 2022), purpose (e.g., national anthem), and emotion, can be captured synthetically by linking to other schedules in a general phenomenon‐based scheme. Current research is ongoing into the harmonization of musical phenomena with those represented in Semantic Web ontologies such as Polifonia (https://polifonia-project.eu/), Musicmoz (https://musicmoz.org/), and so forth.…”