Charles H. Smith, Professor of Library Public Services at Western Kentucky
University, compiled in 1993 a large database of classical composers with
inherent relationships, called The Classical Music Navigator.
With this existing database, and using Tulip for the heavy lifting, Anonymous Prof was
able to map the relationships between 444 classical composers starting from
Hildegard in 1098 through the present day.
What we see here is a 3D representation of the 444 composers. Each white
sphere is a composer and each line represents a connection. For this
visualization, a connection represents a point of influence. In other words,
every time The Classical Music Navigator indicated that composer A was
influenced by composer B, a link was created. The size of the spheres
represents the number of direct influences that a composer has had. This
resulted in 2,618 direct relationships. The bluer the line the younger the
composer (bottom) and the redder the line, the older the composer (top).