{"title":"Consonance, Dissonance, and Formal Proportions in Two Works by Sofia Gubaidulina","authors":"Noah Kahrs","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina’s music, particularly in terms of the composer’s intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina’s music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, “dissonant” sounds are closer to white noise than “consonant” sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina’s music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Music Theory Online","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.7","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina’s music, particularly in terms of the composer’s intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina’s music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, “dissonant” sounds are closer to white noise than “consonant” sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina’s music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances.
期刊介绍:
Music Theory Online is a journal of criticism, commentary, research and scholarship in music theory, music analysis, and related disciplines. The refereed open-access electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory, MTO has been in continuous publication since 1993. New issues are published four times per year and include articles, reviews, commentaries, and analytical essays. In addition, MTO publishes a list of job opportunities and abstracts of recently completed dissertations.