On Chords Generating Scales; Three Compositions for Orchestra
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Diatonic-Collection Disruption in the Melodic Material of Alban Berg‟S Op
Michael Schnitzius Diatonic-Collection Disruption in the Melodic Material of Alban Berg‟s Op. 5, no. 2 The pre-serial Expressionist music of the early twentieth century composed by Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, most notably Alban Berg and Anton Webern, has famously provoked many music-analytical dilemmas that have, themselves, spawned a wide array of new analytical approaches over the last hundred years. Schoenberg‟s own published contributions to the analytical understanding of this cryptic musical style are often vague, at best, and tend to describe musical effects without clearly explaining the means used to create them. His concept of “the emancipation of the dissonance” has become a well known musical idea, and, as Schoenberg describes the pre-serial music of his school, “a style based on [the premise of „the emancipation of the dissonance‟] treats dissonances like consonances and renounces a tonal center.”1 The free treatment of dissonance and the renunciation of a tonal center are musical effects that are simple to observe in the pre-serial music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, and yet the specific means employed in this repertoire for avoiding the establishment of a perceived tonal center are difficult to describe. Both Allen Forte‟s “Pitch-Class Set Theory” and the more recent approach of Joseph Straus‟s “Atonal Voice Leading” provide excellently specific means of describing the relationships of segmented musical ideas with one another. However, the question remains: why are these segmented ideas the types of musical ideas that the composer wanted to use, and what role do they play in renouncing a tonal center? Furthermore, how does the renunciation of a tonal center contribute to the positive construction of the musical language, if at all? 1 Arnold Schoenberg, “Composition with Twelve Tones” (delivered as a lecture at the University of California at Las Angeles, March 26, 1941), in Style and Idea, ed. -
MTO 10.1: Wibberley, Syntonic Tuning
Volume 10, Number 1, February 2004 Copyright © 2004 Society for Music Theory Roger Wibberley KEYWORDS: Aristoxenus, comma, Ganassi, Jachet, Josquin, Ptolemy, Rore, tetrachord, Vesper-Psalms, Willaert, Zarlino ABSTRACT: This Essay makes at the outset an important (if somewhat controversial) assumption. This is that Syntonic tuning (Just Intonation) is not—though often presumed to be so—primarily what might be termed “a performer’s art.” On the contrary it is a composer’s art. As with the work of any composer from any period, it is the performer’s duty to render the music according to the composer’s wishes as shown through the evidence. Such evidence may be indirect (perhaps documentary) or it may be explicitly structural (to be revealed through analysis). What will be clear is the fallacy of assuming that Just Intonation can (or should) be applied to any music rather than only to that which was specifically designed by the composer for the purpose. How one can deduce whether a particular composer did, or did not, have the sound world of Just Intonation (henceforward referred to as “JI”) in mind when composing will also be explored together with a supporting analytical rationale. Musical soundscape (especially where voices are concerned) means, of course, incalculably more than mere “accurate intonation of pitches” (which alone is the focus of this essay): its color derives not only from pitch combination, but more importantly from the interplay of vocal timbres. These arise from the diverse vowel sounds and consonants that give life, color and expression. The audio examples provided here are therefore to be regarded as “playbacks” and no claim is being implied or intended that they in any way stand up as “performances.” Some care, nonetheless, has been taken to make them as acceptable as is possible with computer-generated sounds. -
Models of Octatonic and Whole-Tone Interaction: George Crumb and His Predecessors
Models of Octatonic and Whole-Tone Interaction: George Crumb and His Predecessors Richard Bass Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Autumn, 1994), pp. 155-186. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2909%28199423%2938%3A2%3C155%3AMOOAWI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X Journal of Music Theory is currently published by Yale University Department of Music. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/yudm.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Mon Jul 30 09:19:06 2007 MODELS OF OCTATONIC AND WHOLE-TONE INTERACTION: GEORGE CRUMB AND HIS PREDECESSORS Richard Bass A bifurcated view of pitch structure in early twentieth-century music has become more explicit in recent analytic writings. -
Construction and Verification of the Scale Detection Method for Traditional Japanese Music – a Method Based on Pitch Sequence of Musical Scales –
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.12 No.2 pp.309-315 (2013) Special Issue on KEER 2012 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Construction and Verification of the Scale Detection Method for Traditional Japanese Music – A Method Based on Pitch Sequence of Musical Scales – Akihiro KAWASE Department of Corpus Studies, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, 10-2 Midori-cho, Tachikawa City, Tokyo 190-8561, Japan Abstract: In this study, we propose a method for automatically detecting musical scales from Japanese musical pieces. A scale is a series of musical notes in ascending or descending order, which is an important element for describing the tonal system (Tonesystem) and capturing the characteristics of the music. The study of scale theory has a long history. Many scale theories for Japanese music have been designed up until this point. Out of these, we chose to formulate a scale detection method based on Seiichi Tokawa’s scale theories for traditional Japanese music, because Tokawa’s scale theories provide a versatile system that covers various conventional scale theories. Since Tokawa did not describe any of his scale detection procedures in detail, we started by analyzing his theories and understanding their characteristics. Based on the findings, we constructed the scale detection method and implemented it in the Java Runtime Environment. Specifically, we sampled 1,794 works from the Nihon Min-yo Taikan (Anthology of Japanese Folk Songs, 1944-1993), and performed the method. We compared the detection results with traditional research results in order to verify the detection method. If the various scales of Japanese music can be automatically detected, it will facilitate the work of specifying scales, which promotes the humanities analysis of Japanese music. -
Citymac 2018
CityMac 2018 City, University of London, 5–7 July 2018 Sponsored by the Society for Music Analysis and Blackwell Wiley Organiser: Dr Shay Loya Programme and Abstracts SMA If you are using this booklet electronically, click on the session you want to get to for that session’s abstract. Like the SMA on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SocietyforMusicAnalysis Follow the SMA on Twitter: @SocMusAnalysis Conference Hashtag: #CityMAC Thursday, 5 July 2018 09.00 – 10.00 Registration (College reception with refreshments in Great Hall, Level 1) 10.00 – 10.30 Welcome (Performance Space); continued by 10.30 – 12.30 Panel: What is the Future of Music Analysis in Ethnomusicology? Discussant: Bryon Dueck Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh (Loughborough University), Joe Browning (University of Oxford), Sue Miller (Leeds Beckett University), Laudan Nooshin (City, University of London), Lara Pearson (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetic) 12.30 – 14.00 Lunch (Great Hall, Level 1) 14.00 – 15.30 Session 1 Session 1a: Analysing Regional Transculturation (PS) Chair: Richard Widdess . Luis Gimenez Amoros (University of the Western Cape): Social mobility and mobilization of Shona music in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe . Behrang Nikaeen (Independent): Ashiq Music in Iran and its relationship with Popular Music: A Preliminary Report . George Pioustin: Constructing the ‘Indigenous Music’: An Analysis of the Music of the Syrian Christians of Malabar Post Vernacularization Session 1b: Exploring Musical Theories (AG08) Chair: Kenneth Smith . Barry Mitchell (Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance): Do the ideas in André Pogoriloffsky's The Music of the Temporalists have any practical application? . John Muniz (University of Arizona): ‘The ear alone must judge’: Harmonic Meta-Theory in Weber’s Versuch . -
Kostka, Stefan
TEN Classical Serialism INTRODUCTION When Schoenberg composed the first twelve-tone piece in the summer of 192 1, I the "Pre- lude" to what would eventually become his Suite, Op. 25 (1923), he carried to a conclusion the developments in chromaticism that had begun many decades earlier. The assault of chromaticism on the tonal system had led to the nonsystem of free atonality, and now Schoenberg had developed a "method [he insisted it was not a "system"] of composing with twelve tones that are related only with one another." Free atonality achieved some of its effect through the use of aggregates, as we have seen, and many atonal composers seemed to have been convinced that atonality could best be achieved through some sort of regular recycling of the twelve pitch class- es. But it was Schoenberg who came up with the idea of arranging the twelve pitch classes into a particular series, or row, th at would remain essentially constant through- out a composition. Various twelve-tone melodies that predate 1921 are often cited as precursors of Schoenberg's tone row, a famous example being the fugue theme from Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zararhustra (1895). A less famous example, but one closer than Strauss's theme to Schoenberg'S method, is seen in Example IO-\. Notice that Ives holds off the last pitch class, C, for measures until its dramatic entrance in m. 68. Tn the music of Strauss and rves th e twelve-note theme is a curiosity, but in the mu sic of Schoenberg and his fo ll owers the twelve-note row is a basic shape that can be presented in four well-defined ways, thereby assuring a certain unity in the pitch domain of a composition. -
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. -
Chord Progressions
Chord Progressions Part I 2 Chord Progressions The Best Free Chord Progression Lessons on the Web "The recipe for music is part melody, lyric, rhythm, and harmony (chord progressions). The term chord progression refers to a succession of tones or chords played in a particular order for a specified duration that harmonizes with the melody. Except for styles such as rap and free jazz, chord progressions are an essential building block of contemporary western music establishing the basic framework of a song. If you take a look at a large number of popular songs, you will find that certain combinations of chords are used repeatedly because the individual chords just simply sound good together. I call these popular chord progressions the money chords. These money chord patterns vary in length from one- or two-chord progressions to sequences lasting for the whole song such as the twelve-bar blues and thirty-two bar rhythm changes." (Excerpt from Chord Progressions For Songwriters © 2003 by Richard J. Scott) Every guitarist should have a working knowledge of how these chord progressions are created and used in popular music. Click below for the best in free chord progressions lessons available on the web. Ascending Augmented (I-I+-I6-I7) - - 4 Ascending Bass Lines - - 5 Basic Progressions (I-IV) - - 10 Basie Blues Changes - - 8 Blues Progressions (I-IV-I-V-I) - - 15 Blues With A Bridge - - 36 Bridge Progressions - - 37 Cadences - - 50 Canons - - 44 Circle Progressions -- 53 Classic Rock Progressions (I-bVII-IV) -- 74 Coltrane Changes -- 67 Combination -
Surviving Set Theory: a Pedagogical Game and Cooperative Learning Approach to Undergraduate Post-Tonal Music Theory
Surviving Set Theory: A Pedagogical Game and Cooperative Learning Approach to Undergraduate Post-Tonal Music Theory DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Angela N. Ripley, M.M. Graduate Program in Music The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: David Clampitt, Advisor Anna Gawboy Johanna Devaney Copyright by Angela N. Ripley 2015 Abstract Undergraduate music students often experience a high learning curve when they first encounter pitch-class set theory, an analytical system very different from those they have studied previously. Students sometimes find the abstractions of integer notation and the mathematical orientation of set theory foreign or even frightening (Kleppinger 2010), and the dissonance of the atonal repertoire studied often engenders their resistance (Root 2010). Pedagogical games can help mitigate student resistance and trepidation. Table games like Bingo (Gillespie 2000) and Poker (Gingerich 1991) have been adapted to suit college-level classes in music theory. Familiar television shows provide another source of pedagogical games; for example, Berry (2008; 2015) adapts the show Survivor to frame a unit on theory fundamentals. However, none of these pedagogical games engage pitch- class set theory during a multi-week unit of study. In my dissertation, I adapt the show Survivor to frame a four-week unit on pitch- class set theory (introducing topics ranging from pitch-class sets to twelve-tone rows) during a sophomore-level theory course. As on the show, students of different achievement levels work together in small groups, or “tribes,” to complete worksheets called “challenges”; however, in an important modification to the structure of the show, no students are voted out of their tribes. -
Pitch-Class Set Theory: an Overture
Chapter One Pitch-Class Set Theory: An Overture A Tale of Two Continents In the late afternoon of October 24, 1999, about one hundred people were gathered in a large rehearsal room of the Rotterdam Conservatory. They were listening to a discussion between representatives of nine European countries about the teaching of music theory and music analysis. It was the third day of the Fourth European Music Analysis Conference.1 Most participants in the conference (which included a number of music theorists from Canada and the United States) had been looking forward to this session: meetings about the various analytical traditions and pedagogical practices in Europe were rare, and a broad survey of teaching methods was lacking. Most felt a need for information from beyond their country’s borders. This need was reinforced by the mobility of music students and the resulting hodgepodge of nationalities at renowned conservatories and music schools. Moreover, the European systems of higher education were on the threshold of a harmoni- zation operation. Earlier that year, on June 19, the governments of 29 coun- tries had ratifi ed the “Bologna Declaration,” a document that envisaged a unifi ed European area for higher education. Its enforcement added to the urgency of the meeting in Rotterdam. However, this meeting would not be remembered for the unusually broad rep- resentation of nationalities or for its political timeliness. What would be remem- bered was an incident which took place shortly after the audience had been invited to join in the discussion. Somebody had raised a question about classroom analysis of twentieth-century music, a recurring topic among music theory teach- ers: whereas the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lent itself to general analytical methodologies, the extremely diverse repertoire of the twen- tieth century seemed only to invite ad hoc approaches; how could the analysis of 1. -
Lecture Notes
Notes on Chromatic Harmony © 2010 John Paul Ito Chromatic Modulation Enharmonic modulation Pivot-chord modulation in which the pivot chord is spelled differently in the two keys. Ger +6 (enharmonically equivalent to a dominant seventh) and diminished sevenths are the most popular options. See A/S 534-536 Common-tone modulation Usually a type of phrase modulation. The two keys are distantly related, but the tonic triads share a common tone. (E.g. direct modulation from C major to A-flat major.) In some cases, the common tone may be spelled using an enharmonic equivalent. See A/S 596-599. Common-tone modulations often involve… Chromatic mediant relationships Chromatic mediants were extremely popular with nineteenth-century composers, being used with increasing frequency and freedom as the century progressed. A chromatic mediant relationship is one in which the triadic roots (or tonal centers) are a third apart, and in which at least one of the potential common tones between the triads (or tonic triads of the keys) is not a common tone because of chromatic alterations. In the example above of C major going to A-flat major, the diatonic third relationship with C major would be A minor, which has two common tones (C and E) with C major. Because of the substitution of A-flat major (bVI relative to C) for A minor, there is only one common tone, C, as the C-major triad includes E and the A-flat-major triad contains E-flat. The contrast is even more jarring if A-flat minor is substituted; now there are no common tones. -
The Social Economic and Environmental Impacts of Trade
Journal of Modern Education Review, ISSN 2155-7993, USA August 2020, Volume 10, No. 8, pp. 597–603 Doi: 10.15341/jmer(2155-7993)/08.10.2020/007 © Academic Star Publishing Company, 2020 http://www.academicstar.us Musical Vectors and Spaces Candace Carroll, J. X. Carteret (1. Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering, Gordon State College, USA; 2. Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Gordon State College, USA) Abstract: A vector is a quantity which has both magnitude and direction. In music, since an interval has both magnitude and direction, an interval is a vector. In his seminal work Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations, David Lewin depicts an interval i as an arrow or vector from a point s to a point t in musical space. Using Lewin’s text as a point of departure, this article discusses the notion of musical vectors in musical spaces. Key words: Pitch space, pitch class space, chord space, vector space, affine space 1. Introduction A vector is a quantity which has both magnitude and direction. In music, since an interval has both magnitude and direction, an interval is a vector. In his seminal work Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations, David Lewin (2012) depicts an interval i as an arrow or vector from a point s to a point t in musical space (p. xxix). Using Lewin’s text as a point of departure, this article further discusses the notion of musical vectors in musical spaces. t i s Figure 1 David Lewin’s Depiction of an Interval i as a Vector Throughout the discussion, enharmonic equivalence will be assumed.