Decoding compositional complexity: Identifying composers using a model fusion-based approach with nonlinear signal processing and chaotic dynamics

Abstract

Music, a universal medium that effortlessly transcends the confines of language and culture, serves as a vessel for the distinctive expression of a composer's ingenuity, particularly palpable through the elaborate symphony of melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. This phenomenon is acutely observable in the realm of Turkish Classical Music, where the identification of individual composers poses a formidable challenge due to a confluence of diverse stylistic expressions and sophisticated techniques. Shaped by centuries of cultural interchanges, this genre is celebrated for its convoluted rhythmic frameworks and deep melodic modes, often exhibiting fractal characteristics that compound the complexity of composer classification based on mere audio signals. In response to these complexities, this study introduces an advanced analytical paradigm that amalgamates Multi-resolution analysis, spectral entropy assessments, and a spectrum of multidimensional chaotic and statistical descriptors. By invoking chaos theory, the research delineates distinct patterns and features inherent to musical compositions, subsequently deploying these discoveries for composer categorization. Employing a model fusion-based strategy, the approach utilizes esteemed base estimators for section-level probabilistic determinations, subsequently amalgamated at the song level through a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network model to classify a corpus of 380 compositions from 15 distinct composers. The results of this study not only highlight the efficacy of chaos-based approaches in Musical Information Retrieval but also provide a nuanced understanding of the unique characteristics of Turkish Classical Music, thus advancing the boundaries of how musicological data is scrutinized and conceptualized within scholarly discourse.