This article examines the structural and semiotic functions of vocables in rap music. Analytical studies of the rapping voice have predominantly focused on lyrics, rhyme, accent, rhythm, and the emergent property of flow. Although timbral aspects of the voice play an important role in rappers’ flow, identity construction, and reception, investigations of timbre and non-lexical expression (e.g., vocables) remain comparatively rare. As a case study, I focus on the signature ad-lib vocable of Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion—a creaky-voiced [æ] vowel, like the “a” in cat. Analyzing a corpus of all recorded instances of this vocable in her commercially available recordings (699 instances in 101 songs), along with timbral and phonetic close-reading, I claim that vocables can serve both percussive and formal functions in rap music. Synthesizing perspectives from sociolinguistics, gender and sexuality studies, and brand theory, I argue that Megan Thee Stallion uses her vocable as a timbre trademark: a unique, memorable, and immediately recognizable sonic icon of her brand persona. This brand is closely associated with the gendered and racialized social history of vocal fry in representations of female sexual pleasure. I close by suggesting that vocal timbre plays a leading though often invisible role in hip-hop expression and politics.
{"title":"Analyzing Vocables in Rap","authors":"Zachary Wallmark","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.2.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.2.10","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the structural and semiotic functions of vocables in rap music. Analytical studies of the rapping voice have predominantly focused on lyrics, rhyme, accent, rhythm, and the emergent property of flow. Although timbral aspects of the voice play an important role in rappers’ flow, identity construction, and reception, investigations of timbre and non-lexical expression (e.g., vocables) remain comparatively rare. As a case study, I focus on the signature ad-lib vocable of Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion—a creaky-voiced [æ] vowel, like the “a” in cat. Analyzing a corpus of all recorded instances of this vocable in her commercially available recordings (699 instances in 101 songs), along with timbral and phonetic close-reading, I claim that vocables can serve both percussive and formal functions in rap music. Synthesizing perspectives from sociolinguistics, gender and sexuality studies, and brand theory, I argue that Megan Thee Stallion uses her vocable as a timbre trademark: a unique, memorable, and immediately recognizable sonic icon of her brand persona. This brand is closely associated with the gendered and racialized social history of vocal fry in representations of female sexual pleasure. I close by suggesting that vocal timbre plays a leading though often invisible role in hip-hop expression and politics.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47245827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I present two broad types of postchoruses determined according to the rhetorical role of closing material and the particular placement of buildup and climax over the course of the chorus and postchorus. The codetta-type postchorus is characterized as an independent section of music featuring closing material that follows the attainment of closure in the chorus. The anthem-type postchorus is an independent and climactic section of music that follows a building chorus. For this study, 1335 Top-40 songs from 2010 to 2015 were surveyed. Of these songs, 13.3% had a postchorus. Examples discussed in this article include “Roar” by Katy Perry (2013), “Undo It” by Carrie Underwood (2010), “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO (2011), “I Need Your Love” by Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding (2012), “La La La” by Naughty Boy ft. Sam Smith (2013), and “Animals” by Maroon 5 (2014).
在这篇文章中，我提出了两种广泛的后喜剧类型，这两种类型是根据结尾材料的修辞作用以及在合唱和后喜剧过程中集结和高潮的特殊位置而确定的。codetta类型的后合唱是一个独立的音乐部分，以合唱结束后的结束材料为特色。国歌类型的后合唱是一个独立的音乐高潮部分，跟随建筑合唱。在这项研究中，对2010年至2015年的1335首40强歌曲进行了调查。在这些歌曲中，13.3%的歌曲带有后和弦。本文讨论的例子包括Katy Perry（2013）的《咆哮》、Carrie Underwood（2010）的《撤消它》、LMFAO（2011）的《派对摇滚圣歌》、Calvin Harris ft的《我需要你的爱》、Ellie Goulding（2012）的《La La La》、Naughty Boy ft的Sam Smith（2013）和Maroon 5的《动物》（2014）。
{"title":"Codetta and Anthem Postchorus Types in Top-40 Pop from 2010 to 2015","authors":"C. Stroud","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.2.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.2.9","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I present two broad types of postchoruses determined according to the rhetorical role of closing material and the particular placement of buildup and climax over the course of the chorus and postchorus. The codetta-type postchorus is characterized as an independent section of music featuring closing material that follows the attainment of closure in the chorus. The anthem-type postchorus is an independent and climactic section of music that follows a building chorus. For this study, 1335 Top-40 songs from 2010 to 2015 were surveyed. Of these songs, 13.3% had a postchorus. Examples discussed in this article include “Roar” by Katy Perry (2013), “Undo It” by Carrie Underwood (2010), “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO (2011), “I Need Your Love” by Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding (2012), “La La La” by Naughty Boy ft. Sam Smith (2013), and “Animals” by Maroon 5 (2014).","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49211686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I posit and develop the principle of tonal ebb to account for breaches of harmonic syntax in the normative tonal flow of common practice era music, with special reference to V going to II. Though typically forbidden, V—II progressions occasionally arise in a handful of special cases. Rarely, one may encounter a sunken II chord: this is my term for an apparent, diatonic II chord that arises from contrapuntal motion within V in major keys. To ground this rather abstract contrapuntal artifact and highlight its unique affective properties, I develop a conceptual model for the apparent V—II—V tonal formation that draws on an analogy to a folding technique from origami. Owing to its voice leading properties, the sunken II chord is particularly well-suited to conveying a sense of “that which lies within” in musical terms. I argue that Robert Schumann was sensitive to this effect—consciously or unconsciously—and that he employed it in his songs to underscore moments of inwardness, introspection, or heightened subjectivity in the poetry. I proceed to investigate three Schumann songs from 1840 that feature a text-music correspondence involving a prominent sunken II chord and some manner of inward turn in the text.
{"title":"Tonal Ebb, Sunken II Chords, and Text-Music Correspondences in Robert Schumann’s Lieder","authors":"Alexander Martin","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I posit and develop the principle of tonal ebb to account for breaches of harmonic syntax in the normative tonal flow of common practice era music, with special reference to V going to II. Though typically forbidden, V—II progressions occasionally arise in a handful of special cases. Rarely, one may encounter a sunken II chord: this is my term for an apparent, diatonic II chord that arises from contrapuntal motion within V in major keys. To ground this rather abstract contrapuntal artifact and highlight its unique affective properties, I develop a conceptual model for the apparent V—II—V tonal formation that draws on an analogy to a folding technique from origami. Owing to its voice leading properties, the sunken II chord is particularly well-suited to conveying a sense of “that which lies within” in musical terms. I argue that Robert Schumann was sensitive to this effect—consciously or unconsciously—and that he employed it in his songs to underscore moments of inwardness, introspection, or heightened subjectivity in the poetry. I proceed to investigate three Schumann songs from 1840 that feature a text-music correspondence involving a prominent sunken II chord and some manner of inward turn in the text.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45261120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article is in response to and in broad support of Philip Ewell’s keynote talk, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame,” given at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, and essay, “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame” (".fn_cite_year($ewell_2020)."). In his address and its companion essay, Ewell notes how the repertoire we study and teach, as well as the theories we use to explain it, are manifestations of whiteness. My article will show, first, that the repertory used in the development of theories of harmony and form, as well as (and especially) music theory pedagogy comprises a small, unrepresentative corpus of pieces from the so-called “common practice period” of tonal music, mostly the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and only a small subset of their output. We (mis)use this repertory due to a combination of implicit biases that stem from our enculturation as practicing musicians, explicit biases that stem from broadly held aesthetic beliefs regarding the status of “great” composers and particular “masterworks,” and confirmation biases that are manifest in our tendency to use only positive testing strategies and/or selective sampling when developing and demonstrating our theories. The theories of harmony and form developed from this small corpus further suffer from overfitting, whereby theoretical models are overdetermined relative to the broader norms of a musical practice, and from our tendency to conceive of our theoretic models in terms of tightly regulated “scripts” rather than looser “plans.” For these reasons, simply expanding our analytic and/or pedagogical canon will do little to displace the underlying aesthetic and cultural values that are bound up with it. We must also address the biases that underlie canon formation and valuation and the methodologies that inherently privilege certain pieces, composers, and repertoires to the detriment of others. It is thus argued that working toward greater equity, diversity, and inclusion in music theory goes hand in hand with addressing some of the problematic methodologies that have long plagued our discipline.
{"title":"A Bevy of Biases","authors":"Justin M. London","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.4","url":null,"abstract":"This article is in response to and in broad support of Philip Ewell’s keynote talk, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame,” given at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, and essay, “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame” (\".fn_cite_year($ewell_2020).\"). In his address and its companion essay, Ewell notes how the repertoire we study and teach, as well as the theories we use to explain it, are manifestations of whiteness. My article will show, first, that the repertory used in the development of theories of harmony and form, as well as (and especially) music theory pedagogy comprises a small, unrepresentative corpus of pieces from the so-called “common practice period” of tonal music, mostly the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and only a small subset of their output. We (mis)use this repertory due to a combination of implicit biases that stem from our enculturation as practicing musicians, explicit biases that stem from broadly held aesthetic beliefs regarding the status of “great” composers and particular “masterworks,” and confirmation biases that are manifest in our tendency to use only positive testing strategies and/or selective sampling when developing and demonstrating our theories. The theories of harmony and form developed from this small corpus further suffer from overfitting, whereby theoretical models are overdetermined relative to the broader norms of a musical practice, and from our tendency to conceive of our theoretic models in terms of tightly regulated “scripts” rather than looser “plans.” For these reasons, simply expanding our analytic and/or pedagogical canon will do little to displace the underlying aesthetic and cultural values that are bound up with it. We must also address the biases that underlie canon formation and valuation and the methodologies that inherently privilege certain pieces, composers, and repertoires to the detriment of others. It is thus argued that working toward greater equity, diversity, and inclusion in music theory goes hand in hand with addressing some of the problematic methodologies that have long plagued our discipline.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45307313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I introduce the concepts of structural density and structural clarity, which describe how difficult or easy a given piece of music is to parse, and present an analysis of the song “Ohmnivalent,” by the technical death metal band Anomalous, as a case study. Because the song moves from high structural density at its start to structural clarity at its end, it allows for a nuanced discussion of the factors that contribute to these effects. I argue, drawing on the work of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Dora Hanninen, David Huron, and Lawrence Zbikowski, that repetition, clear cues for segmentation, schemas, and clear categorical belonging all contribute to structural clarity, while their lack or ambivalence contribute to structural density. While my article focuses on the specifics of a single, extraordinarily complex technical death metal track, I close by suggesting that the concepts of structural density and structural clarity have wider potential applicability as ways of thinking about the experience of musical form.
{"title":"Structural Density and Clarity, Technical Death Metal, and Anomalous’s “Ohmnivalent”","authors":"Calder Hannan","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I introduce the concepts of structural density and structural clarity, which describe how difficult or easy a given piece of music is to parse, and present an analysis of the song “Ohmnivalent,” by the technical death metal band Anomalous, as a case study. Because the song moves from high structural density at its start to structural clarity at its end, it allows for a nuanced discussion of the factors that contribute to these effects. I argue, drawing on the work of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Dora Hanninen, David Huron, and Lawrence Zbikowski, that repetition, clear cues for segmentation, schemas, and clear categorical belonging all contribute to structural clarity, while their lack or ambivalence contribute to structural density. While my article focuses on the specifics of a single, extraordinarily complex technical death metal track, I close by suggesting that the concepts of structural density and structural clarity have wider potential applicability as ways of thinking about the experience of musical form.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43436013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On the basis of assumptions and conclusions first advanced in 1968 concerning tuning instructions that were originally written down ca. 1800 BCE, Assyriologists have agreed that Mesopotamian tuning was diatonic. Nonetheless, Sam Mirelman (2013) has recently suggested that this consensus view is “uncomfortably familiar and Eurocentric.” As a follow-up to Mirelman’s misgiving, the present report begins by identifying flaws in the reasoning concerning Mesopotamian tuning that was disseminated more than half a century ago and have remained uncontested. The starting point of the present study is information directly recorded in Mesopotamian documents, as opposed to concepts dating from Greek Antiquity and beyond. This information includes the spatial ordering of strings and the relative fundamental frequencies of two pairs of strings on the sammû, a harp or lyre that is explicitly identified in cuneiform tablets, as well as the tuning instructions’ recursive and symmetrical patterning of prescriptions concerning the alterations of this instrument’s strings. At each step, this patterning involves loosening or tightening a string that is three or four strings away from the string that had just been tightened or loosened. Added to these observations are acoustical features of the harmonics produced by plucked strings, and the auditory roughness and smoothness produced by pairs of plucked strings that psychoacoustical studies have established as universally audible. On these bases, one can conclude that Mesopotamian tuning can be interpreted as diatonic in structure without assuming such notions as octave identity, scale degrees, and consonance, all concepts for which there is no known testimony until much later in the history of music theory.
{"title":"Was Mesopotamian Tuning Diatonic? A Parsimonious Answer","authors":"J. Rahn","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.7","url":null,"abstract":"On the basis of assumptions and conclusions first advanced in 1968 concerning tuning instructions that were originally written down ca. 1800 BCE, Assyriologists have agreed that Mesopotamian tuning was diatonic. Nonetheless, Sam Mirelman (2013) has recently suggested that this consensus view is “uncomfortably familiar and Eurocentric.” As a follow-up to Mirelman’s misgiving, the present report begins by identifying flaws in the reasoning concerning Mesopotamian tuning that was disseminated more than half a century ago and have remained uncontested. The starting point of the present study is information directly recorded in Mesopotamian documents, as opposed to concepts dating from Greek Antiquity and beyond. This information includes the spatial ordering of strings and the relative fundamental frequencies of two pairs of strings on the sammû, a harp or lyre that is explicitly identified in cuneiform tablets, as well as the tuning instructions’ recursive and symmetrical patterning of prescriptions concerning the alterations of this instrument’s strings. At each step, this patterning involves loosening or tightening a string that is three or four strings away from the string that had just been tightened or loosened. Added to these observations are acoustical features of the harmonics produced by plucked strings, and the auditory roughness and smoothness produced by pairs of plucked strings that psychoacoustical studies have established as universally audible. On these bases, one can conclude that Mesopotamian tuning can be interpreted as diatonic in structure without assuming such notions as octave identity, scale degrees, and consonance, all concepts for which there is no known testimony until much later in the history of music theory.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43985664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Drew Nobile, Form as Harmony in Rock Music (Oxford University Press, 2020)","authors":"Alyssa Barna","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.10","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46080348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a framework to approach musical hybridity, which is understood generally as any combination of musical identities. The framework focuses on the concepts of mixture strategies—perceptible processes of interaction and manipulation of styles, genres, and other identity markers. Mixture strategies are recurrent treatments of disparate musical identities in hybrid music, and not only do they define what the materials are, they more fully explore how these entities are put together. There are four distinct mixture strategies—clash, coexistence, distortion, and trajectory—and each have peculiar characteristics and significations contingent on their use structurally and contextually. In the article I define and exemplify each of the four mixture strategies in composers from, or related to, the post-1960s polystylistic concert music such as Alfred Schnittke, George Rochberg, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Peter Maxwell Davies. In these works, hybridity itself is foregrounded, and articulates the musical discourse as much, and oftentimes more so, than other musical parameters. Thus, this repertory proves helpful to demonstrate a general framework that can, and should, be applicable to other hybrid repertories. As I discuss the mixture strategies, I will debate the potential interpretive tropes for each. Then, I apply these ideas in interpreting the entire second movement of Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1, a work that explores all four mixture strategies. The second movement is then contextualized within the entire concerto.
{"title":"Mixture Strategies","authors":"Bruno Alcalde","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a framework to approach musical hybridity, which is understood generally as any combination of musical identities. The framework focuses on the concepts of mixture strategies—perceptible processes of interaction and manipulation of styles, genres, and other identity markers. Mixture strategies are recurrent treatments of disparate musical identities in hybrid music, and not only do they define what the materials are, they more fully explore how these entities are put together. There are four distinct mixture strategies—clash, coexistence, distortion, and trajectory—and each have peculiar characteristics and significations contingent on their use structurally and contextually.\u0000 In the article I define and exemplify each of the four mixture strategies in composers from, or related to, the post-1960s polystylistic concert music such as Alfred Schnittke, George Rochberg, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Peter Maxwell Davies. In these works, hybridity itself is foregrounded, and articulates the musical discourse as much, and oftentimes more so, than other musical parameters. Thus, this repertory proves helpful to demonstrate a general framework that can, and should, be applicable to other hybrid repertories. As I discuss the mixture strategies, I will debate the potential interpretive tropes for each. Then, I apply these ideas in interpreting the entire second movement of Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1, a work that explores all four mixture strategies. The second movement is then contextualized within the entire concerto.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44613774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anton Webern’s pre-World War I aphoristic works sometimes appear to defy comprehension, but through the lens of Klangfarbenmelodie organizing principles of this music come into focus. Klangfarbenmelodie is a multifaceted principle of musical organization. It is how Klangfarbenfolgen—timbral progressions—are structured into music. This article explores timbral progressions in Webern’s music and some of the types of timbre-based musical logic that organize them. Timbre and pitch are simultaneous, codependent, and symbiotic. With the notion of timbre as the totality of musical tone, this article examines how timbral-registral space is employed to compose timbral trajectories like expansions, contractions, and crossing lines. In addition to drawing out timbral lines, the analyses focus on how timbre helps delineate pitch constructs, timbre’s role in structuring gesture and theme, and various types of timbral symmetry. Rather than a shift away from pitch analysis, this article proposes a repositioning toward the inclusion of timbre in analytic discourses.
{"title":"Klangfarbenmelodie in 1911: Timbre’s Functional Roles in Webern’s Opp. 9 and 10","authors":"M. Zeller","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.9","url":null,"abstract":"Anton Webern’s pre-World War I aphoristic works sometimes appear to defy comprehension, but through the lens of Klangfarbenmelodie organizing principles of this music come into focus. Klangfarbenmelodie is a multifaceted principle of musical organization. It is how Klangfarbenfolgen—timbral progressions—are structured into music. This article explores timbral progressions in Webern’s music and some of the types of timbre-based musical logic that organize them. Timbre and pitch are simultaneous, codependent, and symbiotic. With the notion of timbre as the totality of musical tone, this article examines how timbral-registral space is employed to compose timbral trajectories like expansions, contractions, and crossing lines. In addition to drawing out timbral lines, the analyses focus on how timbre helps delineate pitch constructs, timbre’s role in structuring gesture and theme, and various types of timbral symmetry. Rather than a shift away from pitch analysis, this article proposes a repositioning toward the inclusion of timbre in analytic discourses.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47468892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article addresses the network of forms and genres at play in Schoenberg’s First String Quartet, op. 7, proposing a conception of the work as a representation of urban life in fin-de-siècle Vienna. I offer a summary of the emotionally volatile program and prior analyses, highlighting the central points of contention between analysts. Most especially, these include the relationship between an overall sonata form and a set of intervening cyclic movements. I then problematize Steven Vande Moortele’s notion of “two-dimensional sonata form,” drawing from theoretical investigations into narrative levels and embedded forms in literary theory. The bulk of the article revolves around a thoroughgoing analysis of the large-scale form of the Quartet, presenting a novel reading that situates the work within a complex web of interacting forms and genres. The Quartet begins as a large-scale sonata form, which is interrupted by a juxtaposed cycle of interpolated movements. Upon the arrival of the rondo finale, the sonata is complete. I demonstrate that the rondo finale may be construed as a mirror to a large-scale overarching rondo that can explain the multiple dimensions of the entire work.
{"title":"Integration, Urbanity, and Multi-Dimensionality in Schoenberg’s First Quartet","authors":"Samuel Reenan","doi":"10.30535/mto.28.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses the network of forms and genres at play in Schoenberg’s First String Quartet, op. 7, proposing a conception of the work as a representation of urban life in fin-de-siècle Vienna. I offer a summary of the emotionally volatile program and prior analyses, highlighting the central points of contention between analysts. Most especially, these include the relationship between an overall sonata form and a set of intervening cyclic movements. I then problematize Steven Vande Moortele’s notion of “two-dimensional sonata form,” drawing from theoretical investigations into narrative levels and embedded forms in literary theory. The bulk of the article revolves around a thoroughgoing analysis of the large-scale form of the Quartet, presenting a novel reading that situates the work within a complex web of interacting forms and genres. The Quartet begins as a large-scale sonata form, which is interrupted by a juxtaposed cycle of interpolated movements. Upon the arrival of the rondo finale, the sonata is complete. I demonstrate that the rondo finale may be construed as a mirror to a large-scale overarching rondo that can explain the multiple dimensions of the entire work.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46778261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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