A measure of dissimilarity for comparison of dynamics, agogics, and pedaling in several piano performances

Expressive performance of music is realized with local and global variations in dynamics, timing, intonation, timbre, etc., where particular profiles of these ‘‘expressive elements’’ depend on the players’ performance practices based on their musical thoughts. This paper presents a method to study the correspondence between the physical nature and the subjective effect of expressive elements in piano performances. Let f(s) be a function in musical time, wheres represents the temporal profile of physical correlates with either dynamics, agogics, or pedaling in a piano performance, and let n be the number of these performances for the same music score. The dissimilarity dij between two performances i andj is defined as the root mean square of fi(s)−fj(s) over the prescribed time spanS of the concerned music passage. The discussion focuses on: (1) the construction of f(s) for each of the above‐mentioned expressive elements, and (2) the mapping ofn performances in a geometrical space with the dissimilarity ma...