Figure 3

The H-novelty (left) and P-novelty (right) of the piano compositions (top) and the composers (bottom). (A) The cumulative distribution of the H-novelty scores \(\nu _{H}\) of the works. The median and mean values are \((4.80, 4.78)\) for the Baroque, \((4.38, 4.40)\) for the Classical, \((4.73, 4.729)\) for the Transition, and \((4.82, 4.78)\) for the Romantic periods. (B) The cumulative distribution of the P-novelty scores \(\nu _{P}\) of the works. The median and the means are \((4.90, 4.86)\) for the Baroque, \((4.69, 4.66)\) for the Classical, \((4.88, 4.87)\) for the Transition, and \((4.97, 4.94)\) for the Romantic periods. (C) & (D) The novelty \(\mathrm {N}_{H}\) and \(\mathrm {N}_{P}\) of the composers (defined as the mean of \(\nu _{H}\) and \(\nu _{P}\) of their works). A composer’s position on the x-axis (year) is the midpoint between his birth and death years. One should note that the conventional pool of elements is smaller for baroque composers, which could skew the H-novelty to look higher. However, the P-novelty does not suffer from limitation, and Bach and Scarlatti still have high P-novelty values.