Topic summary
Original
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Originality.
Originality of ideas and creative works
The evaluation of originality depends not only on the creative work itself, but also on the temporal context, the zeitgeist. In a study of the musical originality of 15,618 classical music themes, the importance of objective characteristics and the zeitgeist for popularity was examined. Both the musical originality of a theme relative to its contemporary works (the zeitgeist), as well as its "absolute" originality influenced in similar magnitude the popularity of a theme. Similarly, objective features and temporal context both influenced the evaluation of linguistic originality.