Shadings in the Chromatic Field: Intonations After Morton Feldman
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Morton Feldman: a Celebration of His 80Th Birthday
Morton Feldman : A Celebration of His 80th Birthday Curated by John Bewley June 1 – September 15, 2006 Case 1 Morton Feldman was born January 12, 1926 in New York City to Irving and Frances Feldman. He grew up in Woodside, Queens where his father established a company that manufactured children’s coats. His early musical education consisted of piano lessons at the Third Street Settlement School in Manhattan and beginning at age twelve, with Vera Maurina Press, an acquaintance of the Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, and a student of Ferruccio Busoni, Emil von Sauer, and Ignaz Friedman. Feldman began composing at age nine but did not begin formal studies until age fifteen when he began compositional studies with Wallingford Riegger. Morton Feldman, age 13, at the Perisphere, New York World’s Fair, 1939? Unidentified photographer Rather than pursuing a college education, Feldman chose to study music privately while he continued working for his father until about 1967. After completing his studies in January 1944 at the Music and Arts High School in Manhattan, Feldman studied composition with Stefan Wolpe. It was through Wolpe that Feldman met Edgard Varèse whose music and professional life were major influences on Feldman’s career. Excerpt from “I met Heine on the Rue Furstenburg”, Morton Feldman in conversation with John Dwyer, Buffalo Evening News, Saturday April 21, 1973 Let me tell you about the factory and Lukas Foss (composer and former Buffalo Philharmonic conductor). The plant was near La Guardia airport. Lukas missed his plane one day and he knew I was around there, so he called me up and invited me to lunch. -
Tonalandextratonal Functions of Theaugmented
TONAL AND EXTRATONAL FUNCTIONS OF THE AUGMENTED TRIAD IN THE HARMONIC STRUCTURE OF WEBERN'S 'DEHMEL SONGS' By ROBERT GARTH PRESTON B. Mus., Brandon University, 1982 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (School of Music, Music Theory) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA October 1989 © Garth Preston, 1989 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) ii ABSTRACT: TONAL AND EXTRATONAL FUNCTIONS OF THE AUGMENTED TRIAD IN THE HARMONIC STRUCTURE OF WEBERN'S 'DEHMEL SONGS' The composing of the 'Dehmel Songs' marks a pivotal juncture both in Webern's oeuvre and in the history of music in general. The years that saw the birth of this cycle of five songs, 1906-8, comprise what is generally regarded as a period of transition, in the work of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, from a 'late tonal' style of composition to an early 'atonal' style. In this study I approach the 'Dehmel Songs' from the perspective that its harmonic structure as a whole can be rendered intelligible in a theoretical way by combining a simple pitch-class-set analysis, which essentially involves graphing the pattern of recurrence of the 'augmented triad' as a motivic harmonic entity—a pattern which is in fact serial in nature-through the course of the unfolding harmonic progression, with a tonal interpretation that uses that pattern as a referential pitch-class skeleton. -
Historically Informed Retuning of Polyphonic Vocal Performance
journal of interdisciplinary music studies spring/fall 2008, volume 2, issue 1&2, art. #0821208, pp. 121-139 Historically Informed Retuning of Polyphonic Vocal Performance Jonathan Wild and Peter Schubert Schulich School of Music, McGill University Background in history of music theory. The use of just intonation has generated heated debates ever since the first accounts of the articulation of pitch space in the scientific treatises of Ancient Greece. In the Renaissance, the discussion turned to vocal music as the locus of debate. One of the problems with using just intonation is the incommensurability of pure intervals with one another (e.g., the A four pure fifths above F is not the same pitch as the pure major third above F). Treatises and accounts of tuning systems proliferated, and our present- day understanding of what is at stake is limited by the dearth of sounding examples. Background in performance. On the one hand it is very difficult to verify precisely how modern-day singers tune, and on the other, although recent interest in historical tuning has generated several articles with electronically produced sound examples, the examples do not contribute to a direct understanding of tuning in the vocal context—synthesized sound is simply not “the real thing.” Aims. Our study aims to show how the gap between theories of tuning and the art of vocal performance may be bridged. Main contribution. By producing recordings of precisely tuned audio in rich vocal timbres (with vibrato, consonants and vowels), we make available actual repertoire examples, reliably tuned, in a human-sounding rendition. -
An Adaptive Tuning System for MIDI Pianos
David Løberg Code Groven.Max: School of Music Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008 USA An Adaptive Tuning [email protected] System for MIDI Pianos Groven.Max is a real-time program for mapping a renstemningsautomat, an electronic interface be- performance on a standard keyboard instrument to tween the manual and the pipes with a kind of arti- a nonstandard dynamic tuning system. It was origi- ficial intelligence that automatically adjusts the nally conceived for use with acoustic MIDI pianos, tuning dynamically during performance. This fea- but it is applicable to any tunable instrument that ture overcomes the historic limitation of the stan- accepts MIDI input. Written as a patch in the MIDI dard piano keyboard by allowing free modulation programming environment Max (available from while still preserving just-tuned intervals in www.cycling74.com), the adaptive tuning logic is all keys. modeled after a system developed by Norwegian Keyboard tunings are compromises arising from composer Eivind Groven as part of a series of just the intersection of multiple—sometimes oppos- intonation keyboard instruments begun in the ing—influences: acoustic ideals, harmonic flexibil- 1930s (Groven 1968). The patch was first used as ity, and physical constraints (to name but three). part of the Groven Piano, a digital network of Ya- Using a standard twelve-key piano keyboard, the maha Disklavier pianos, which premiered in Oslo, historical problem has been that any fixed tuning Norway, as part of the Groven Centennial in 2001 in just intonation (i.e., with acoustically pure tri- (see Figure 1). The present version of Groven.Max ads) will be limited to essentially one key. -
MTO 0.7: Alphonce, Dissonance and Schumann's Reckless Counterpoint
Volume 0, Number 7, March 1994 Copyright © 1994 Society for Music Theory Bo H. Alphonce KEYWORDS: Schumann, piano music, counterpoint, dissonance, rhythmic shift ABSTRACT: Work in progress about linearity in early romantic music. The essay discusses non-traditional dissonance treatment in some contrapuntal passages from Schumann’s Kreisleriana, opus 16, and his Grande Sonate F minor, opus 14, in particular some that involve a wedge-shaped linear motion or a rhythmic shift of one line relative to the harmonic progression. [1] The present paper is the first result of a planned project on linearity and other features of person- and period-style in early romantic music.(1) It is limited to Schumann's piano music from the eighteen-thirties and refers to score excerpts drawn exclusively from opus 14 and 16, the Grande Sonate in F minor and the Kreisleriana—the Finale of the former and the first two pieces of the latter. It deals with dissonance in foreground terms only and without reference to expressive connotations. Also, Eusebius, Florestan, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Herr Kapellmeister Kreisler are kept gently off stage. [2] Schumann favours friction dissonances, especially the minor ninth and the major seventh, and he likes them raw: with little preparation and scant resolution. The sforzato clash of C and D in measures 131 and 261 of the Finale of the G minor Sonata, opus 22, offers a brilliant example, a peculiarly compressed dominant arrival just before the return of the main theme in G minor. The minor ninth often occurs exposed at the beginning of a phrase as in the second piece of the Davidsbuendler, opus 6: the opening chord is a V with an appoggiatura 6; as 6 goes to 5, the minor ninth enters together with the fundamental in, respectively, high and low peak registers. -
Exploiting Prior Knowledge During Automatic Key and Chord Estimation from Musical Audio
Exploitatie van voorkennis bij het automatisch afleiden van toonaarden en akkoorden uit muzikale audio Exploiting Prior Knowledge during Automatic Key and Chord Estimation from Musical Audio Johan Pauwels Promotoren: prof. dr. ir. J.-P. Martens, prof. dr. M. Leman Proefschrift ingediend tot het behalen van de graad van Doctor in de Ingenieurswetenschappen Vakgroep Elektronica en Informatiesystemen Voorzitter: prof. dr. ir. R. Van de Walle Faculteit Ingenieurswetenschappen en Architectuur Academiejaar 2015 - 2016 ISBN 978-90-8578-883-6 NUR 962, 965 Wettelijk depot: D/2016/10.500/15 Abstract Chords and keys are two ways of describing music. They are exemplary of a general class of symbolic notations that musicians use to exchange in- formation about a music piece. This information can range from simple tempo indications such as “allegro” to precise instructions for a performer of the music. Concretely, both keys and chords are timed labels that de- scribe the harmony during certain time intervals, where harmony refers to the way music notes sound together. Chords describe the local harmony, whereas keys offer a more global overview and consequently cover a se- quence of multiple chords. Common to all music notations is that certain characteristics of the mu- sic are described while others are ignored. The adopted level of detail de- pends on the purpose of the intended information exchange. A simple de- scription such as “menuet”, for example, only serves to roughly describe the character of a music piece. Sheet music on the other hand contains precise information about the pitch, discretised information pertaining to timing and limited information about the timbre. -
The Lost Harmonic Law of the Bible
The Lost Harmonic Law of the Bible Jay Kappraff New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ 07102 Email: [email protected] Abstract The ethnomusicologist Ernest McClain has shown that metaphors based on the musical scale appear throughout the great sacred and philosophical works of the ancient world. This paper will present an introduction to McClain’s harmonic system and how it sheds light on the Old Testament. 1. Introduction Forty years ago the ethnomusicologist Ernest McClain began to study musical metaphors that appeared in the great sacred and philosophical works of the ancient world. These included the Rg Veda, the dialogues of Plato, and most recently, the Old and New Testaments. I have described his harmonic system and referred to many of his papers and books in my book, Beyond Measure (World Scientific; 2001). Apart from its value in providing new meaning to ancient texts, McClain’s harmonic analysis provides valuable insight into musical theory and mathematics both ancient and modern. 2. Musical Fundamentals Figure 1. Tone circle as a Single-wheeled Chariot of the Sun (Rg Veda) Figure 2. The piano has 88 keys spanning seven octaves and twelve musical fifths. The chromatic musical scale has twelve tones, or semitone intervals, which may be pictured on the face of a clock or along the zodiac referred to in the Rg Veda as the “Single-wheeled Chariot of the Sun.” shown in Fig. 1, with the fundamental tone placed atop the tone circle and associated in ancient sacred texts with “Deity.” The tones are denoted by the first seven letters of the alphabet augmented and diminished by and sharps ( ) and flats (b). -
Cracking a Centuries-Old Tradition
Cracking a Centuries-Old Tradition hen I went to Cambridge, WEngland, on sabbatical in 2013–14, I never dreamed I would wind up conducting one of the world’s great choirs, and pos- sibly changing the way they sing early music. My project for the year was to write a follow-up to Shakespeare’s Songbook (Norton, 2004), my study of all the songs sung, quoted, or alluded to in the plays of Shakespeare. The sequel is a broader look at songs in English Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and by Ross W. why you should care) (Norton, 2007); one Duffin Renaissance comedy, from the on Just Intonation in the Renaissance; one 15th century through the plays of on keyboard temperament; and one on Just Intonation in the 18th century. So, in spite of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. the central purpose of my sabbatical, my tun- Being at Clare Hall at the University of ing work was getting a lot of attention, and I Cambridge allowed me easy access to the was pleased when Stephen Cleobury at King’s resources of the superb University Library College and Andrew Nethsingha at St John’s across the street, a wonderful advantage for College each asked me to coach their choral my work. But it also allowed me the option scholars (the men from the men and boys to attend choral services, virtually every choir) in Just Intonation. By coincidence, it day if I wanted, at any of the thirty-one happened that both coachings were to occur Cambridge colleges. Nowadays, colleges post on the same day, and that became a red-letter the music for all the services each term in day on my calendar—the expected high point an online “Term List,” so I could pick out in of my entire year in Cambridge. -
MTO 20.2: Wild, Vicentino's 31-Tone Compositional Theory
Volume 20, Number 2, June 2014 Copyright © 2014 Society for Music Theory Genus, Species and Mode in Vicentino’s 31-tone Compositional Theory Jonathan Wild NOTE: The examples for the (text-only) PDF version of this item are available online at: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.wild.php KEYWORDS: Vicentino, enharmonicism, chromaticism, sixteenth century, tuning, genus, species, mode ABSTRACT: This article explores the pitch structures developed by Nicola Vicentino in his 1555 treatise L’Antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica . I examine the rationale for his background gamut of 31 pitch classes, and document the relationships among his accounts of the genera, species, and modes, and between his and earlier accounts. Specially recorded and retuned audio examples illustrate some of the surviving enharmonic and chromatic musical passages. Received February 2014 Table of Contents Introduction [1] Tuning [4] The Archicembalo [8] Genus [10] Enharmonic division of the whole tone [13] Species [15] Mode [28] Composing in the genera [32] Conclusion [35] Introduction [1] In his treatise of 1555, L’Antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (henceforth L’Antica musica ), the theorist and composer Nicola Vicentino describes a tuning system comprising thirty-one tones to the octave, and presents several excerpts from compositions intended to be sung in that tuning. (1) The rich compositional theory he develops in the treatise, in concert with the few surviving musical passages, offers a tantalizing glimpse of an alternative pathway for musical development, one whose radically augmented pitch materials make possible a vast range of novel melodic gestures and harmonic successions. -
Intervals and Transposition
CHAPTER 3 Intervals and Transposition Interval Augmented and Simple Intervals TOPICS Octave Diminished Intervals Tuning Systems Unison Enharmonic Intervals Melodic Intervals Perfect, Major, and Minor Tritone Harmonic Intervals Intervals Inversion of Intervals Transposition Consonance and Dissonance Compound Intervals IMPORTANT Tone combinations are classifi ed in music with names that identify the pitch relationships. CONCEPTS Learning to recognize these combinations by both eye and ear is a skill fundamental to basic musicianship. Although many different tone combinations occur in music, the most basic pairing of pitches is the interval. An interval is the relationship in pitch between two tones. Intervals are named by the Intervals number of diatonic notes (notes with different letter names) that can be contained within them. For example, the whole step G to A contains only two diatonic notes (G and A) and is called a second. Figure 3.1 & ww w w Second 1 – 2 The following fi gure shows all the numbers within an octave used to identify intervals: Figure 3.2 w w & w w w w 1ww w2w w3 w4 w5 w6 w7 w8 Notice that the interval numbers shown in Figure 3.2 correspond to the scale degree numbers for the major scale. 55 3711_ben01877_Ch03pp55-72.indd 55 4/10/08 3:57:29 PM The term octave refers to the number 8, its interval number. Figure 3.3 w œ œ w & œ œ œ œ Octavew =2345678=œ1 œ w8 The interval numbered “1” (two notes of the same pitch) is called a unison. Figure 3.4 & 1 =w Unisonw The intervals that include the tonic (keynote) and the fourth and fi fth scale degrees of a Perfect, Major, and major scale are called perfect. -
Feldman the Rug-Maker, Weaving for John Cage by Meg Wilhoite
Feldman the Rug-maker, Weaving For John Cage By Meg Wilhoite In an interview with Jan Williams, Morton Feldman described his fascination with ancient Middle Eastern patterned rugs: “In older oriental rugs the dyes are made in small amounts and so what happens is that there is an imperfection throughout the rug of changing colors of these dyes. Most people feel that they are imperfections. Actually it is the refraction of the light on these small dye batches that makes the rugs wonderful. I interpreted this as going in and out of tune. There is a name for that in rugs - it's called abrash - a change of colors that leads us into pieces like Instruments III [1977] which was the beginning of my rug idea.”1 There is an intimate connection between the rugs Feldman admired and many of the pieces he wrote in the last fifteen or so years of his life. These rugs set up an overall effect of sameness by systematically repeating a set of patterns, while at the same time disrupting this effect by slightly altering the components of those patterns. Similarly, Feldman wrote long works that produce a sense of skewed sameness by writing musical patterns that repeat many times, but change in intonation and/or rhythm almost imperceptibly. I present here a picture of Feldman as meticulous rug-maker, as he wove together what pianist Siegfried Mauser referred to as “an image of discreetly arranged musical sound and form.”2 Thinking of Feldman’s lengthy late works in terms of rug weaving provides us with a useful framework on which to hang both small and large-scale analyses of his music. -
Notes on Morton Feldman's “The King of Denmark” by Eberhard Blum
Notes on Morton Feldman’s “The King of Denmark” by Eberhard Blum [English translation by Peter Söderberg] In February and March 2008 I had an exhibition, entitled “Choice & Chance”, at the Villa Oppenheim in Berlin, a centre for contemporary art. This featured some forty of my large graphite works on paper. In connection with the exhibition, the percussionist Adam Weisman gave a concert with the following programme: Morton Feldman – The King of Denmark (1964), first realization Karlheinz Stockhausen – Zyklus for a percussionist (1959) Morton Feldman – The King of Denmark (1964), second realization I have been familiar with both these compositions for a long time. Their principles of construction have influenced many considerations affecting the construction of my own graphic work (e.g., the question: What could be the nature of indeterminate or aleatoric graphic works?). Morton Feldman often talked about his piece and also described its relationship to Stockhausen’s. Through the percussionist Jan Williams I came to know Feldman’s piece in detail. During his tenure at the “Center of the Creative and Performing Arts” in Buffalo, Jan had created a version which fully corresponded to Feldman’s own conception of the work. The choice of percussion instruments, which are not determined in the score, was made by Jan according to Feldman’s proposals and wishes. More than once I observed them both in the famous percussion room – Room 100 of the Music Department at the University, where early in 1978 we first performed Feldman’s work “Why Patterns?”, then still called “Instruments 4”, for his students – the two of them comparing the sounds of small cymbals and triangles to make the right decision.