Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9534151
Kristen Wallentinsen
Melodic contour is one of a melody's defining characteristics. Music theorists such as Michael Friedmann, Robert Morris, Elizabeth West Marvin and Paul Laprade, and Ian Quinn have developed models for evaluating similarities between contours, but only a few compare similarities between pairs of contours with different lengths, and fewer still can measure shared characteristics among an entire family of contours. This article introduces a new method for evaluating familial similarities between related contours, even if the contours have different cardinalities. The model extends theories of contour transformation by using fuzzy set theory and probability, measuring a contour's degree of familial membership by examining the contour's transformational pathway and calculating the probability that each move in the pathway is shared by other family members. Through the potential of differing alignments along these pathways, the model allows for the possibility that pathways may be omitted or inserted within a contour that exhibits familial resemblance, despite its different cardinality. The analytical utility of the model is then demonstrated through an analysis of melodic possibility in phased portions of Steve Reich's The Desert Music. Integrating variable cardinality into contour similarity relations in this way more adequately accounts for familial relationships between contours and can provide new and valuable insights into one of music's most fundamental elements.
{"title":"Fuzzy Family Ties","authors":"Kristen Wallentinsen","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9534151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9534151","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Melodic contour is one of a melody's defining characteristics. Music theorists such as Michael Friedmann, Robert Morris, Elizabeth West Marvin and Paul Laprade, and Ian Quinn have developed models for evaluating similarities between contours, but only a few compare similarities between pairs of contours with different lengths, and fewer still can measure shared characteristics among an entire family of contours. This article introduces a new method for evaluating familial similarities between related contours, even if the contours have different cardinalities. The model extends theories of contour transformation by using fuzzy set theory and probability, measuring a contour's degree of familial membership by examining the contour's transformational pathway and calculating the probability that each move in the pathway is shared by other family members. Through the potential of differing alignments along these pathways, the model allows for the possibility that pathways may be omitted or inserted within a contour that exhibits familial resemblance, despite its different cardinality. The analytical utility of the model is then demonstrated through an analysis of melodic possibility in phased portions of Steve Reich's The Desert Music. Integrating variable cardinality into contour similarity relations in this way more adequately accounts for familial relationships between contours and can provide new and valuable insights into one of music's most fundamental elements.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73936032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9534163
Trevor Baca
{"title":"Performing Knowledge: Twentieth-Century Music in Analysis and Performance","authors":"Trevor Baca","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9534163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9534163","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81729983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9534115
David E. Cohen
This article explores the advent of two foundational characteristics of the modern concept of harmony inaugurated by Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie (1722): first, that its principal objects are sonorities of three or more distinct pitch classes, that is, consonant and dissonant chords; and second, that these chords “move” from one to the next in ways determined by certain inherent relations among them, in a process in which dissonances, as well as consonances, play a significant if not crucial role. This article shows that the ancestors of these two fundamental properties of harmony, newly understood as a specifically polyphonic phenomenon, first emerged into theoretical discourse in polemical writings of the Northern Italian theorists Nicolò Burzio (1487), Giovanni Spataro (1491), and Franchino Gaffurio (1496, 1518), sparked by the inflammatory views of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia (1482). Moreover, while these ideas about harmony come to cohabit in Gioseffo Zarlino's Istitutioni harmoniche (1558), they were initially proposed not as complementary but as explicitly competing new conceptions of the nature of harmony, advanced to support their authors' polemical positions and attacks on each other.
本文探讨了由拉莫的《和声trait de l’harmonie》(1722)开创的现代和声概念的两个基本特征:第一,它的主要对象是三个或更多不同音高类别的音,即协和和弦和不协和和弦;第二,这些和弦从一个和弦“移动”到下一个和弦的方式是由它们之间的某些内在关系决定的,在这个过程中,不和谐音和和谐音即使不是至关重要,也起着重要作用。本文表明,这两个和声基本属性的祖先,最近被理解为一种特殊的复调现象,首先出现在意大利北部理论家Nicolò Burzio(1487年),Giovanni Spataro(1491年)和Franchino Gaffurio(1496年,1518年)的论争著作中,由Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia(1482年)的煽动观点引发。此外,虽然这些关于和谐的观点在Gioseffo Zarlino的《和谐制度》(1558)中共存,但它们最初并不是作为互补的,而是作为明确竞争的和谐本质的新概念提出的,它们是为了支持作者的辩论立场和相互攻击而提出的。
{"title":"From Ramos to Rameau","authors":"David E. Cohen","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9534115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9534115","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the advent of two foundational characteristics of the modern concept of harmony inaugurated by Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie (1722): first, that its principal objects are sonorities of three or more distinct pitch classes, that is, consonant and dissonant chords; and second, that these chords “move” from one to the next in ways determined by certain inherent relations among them, in a process in which dissonances, as well as consonances, play a significant if not crucial role. This article shows that the ancestors of these two fundamental properties of harmony, newly understood as a specifically polyphonic phenomenon, first emerged into theoretical discourse in polemical writings of the Northern Italian theorists Nicolò Burzio (1487), Giovanni Spataro (1491), and Franchino Gaffurio (1496, 1518), sparked by the inflammatory views of Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareia (1482). Moreover, while these ideas about harmony come to cohabit in Gioseffo Zarlino's Istitutioni harmoniche (1558), they were initially proposed not as complementary but as explicitly competing new conceptions of the nature of harmony, advanced to support their authors' polemical positions and attacks on each other.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83622848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9534127
Caleb Mutch
This article illuminates the modern concept of the triadic root by analyzing that concept and explaining how the English-speaking world came to refer to it with the term root. To do so, it begins by identifying five subconcepts on which theorists have drawn when explaining and applying the root concept in their treatises. The article then addresses the origin of the term root in English-language theory, noting that the term first emerged only in 1806, far later than its modern-day ubiquity would suggest. This late emergence is explained as a side effect of the idiosyncratic state of triadic theorizing in eighteenth-century Britain. The author advances a new interpretation that, as a result of the overtone-based preoccupations of erudite authors and the particular emphases of thoroughbass teachers, British theorists did not use a fully realized triadic theory until much later than has been supposed. The conclusion of the article traces the process by which the term root gained ascendancy in English texts and considers how this history fits into larger trends of thoroughbass and harmony instruction.
{"title":"How the Triad Took (a) Root","authors":"Caleb Mutch","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9534127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9534127","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article illuminates the modern concept of the triadic root by analyzing that concept and explaining how the English-speaking world came to refer to it with the term root. To do so, it begins by identifying five subconcepts on which theorists have drawn when explaining and applying the root concept in their treatises. The article then addresses the origin of the term root in English-language theory, noting that the term first emerged only in 1806, far later than its modern-day ubiquity would suggest. This late emergence is explained as a side effect of the idiosyncratic state of triadic theorizing in eighteenth-century Britain. The author advances a new interpretation that, as a result of the overtone-based preoccupations of erudite authors and the particular emphases of thoroughbass teachers, British theorists did not use a fully realized triadic theory until much later than has been supposed. The conclusion of the article traces the process by which the term root gained ascendancy in English texts and considers how this history fits into larger trends of thoroughbass and harmony instruction.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83581000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9143211
Jason Yust
This article demonstrates how to obtain a periodicity-based description of cyclic rhythms using the discrete Fourier transform and applies this to understanding Steve Reich's use of rhythmic canons in a series of works from the early 1970s through the 1990s. The primary analytical tool is the rhythmic spectrum, which omits phase information, but the use of plots that include phase information is also demonstrated in a few instances. The method shows a consistency in Reich's rhythmic language despite experimentations with irregular cycles, which begins with the formulation of his “signature rhythm,” the basic rhythmic pattern of Clapping Music and Music for Pieces of Wood. The article also demonstrates the evolution of Reich's rhythmic experimentation preceding these pivotal pieces, through his “phase” works of the 1960s. It discusses the relationship of the Fourier-based method and concepts of meter, especially nonisochronous meter, maximally even rhythmic patterns, and the potential of rhythmic canons to interlock and make different kinds of combinatorial patterns.
{"title":"Periodicity-Based Descriptions of Rhythms and Steve Reich's Rhythmic Style","authors":"Jason Yust","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9143211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9143211","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article demonstrates how to obtain a periodicity-based description of cyclic rhythms using the discrete Fourier transform and applies this to understanding Steve Reich's use of rhythmic canons in a series of works from the early 1970s through the 1990s. The primary analytical tool is the rhythmic spectrum, which omits phase information, but the use of plots that include phase information is also demonstrated in a few instances. The method shows a consistency in Reich's rhythmic language despite experimentations with irregular cycles, which begins with the formulation of his “signature rhythm,” the basic rhythmic pattern of Clapping Music and Music for Pieces of Wood. The article also demonstrates the evolution of Reich's rhythmic experimentation preceding these pivotal pieces, through his “phase” works of the 1960s. It discusses the relationship of the Fourier-based method and concepts of meter, especially nonisochronous meter, maximally even rhythmic patterns, and the potential of rhythmic canons to interlock and make different kinds of combinatorial patterns.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87550025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9143197
John Turci-Escobar
This article proposes an intervallic approach to classifying and interpreting sixteenth-century chromaticism. The approach is based on a distinction between active leading tones, which imply resolution by diatonic semitone, and stable notes, which do not. This distinction underlies a dyadic approach to categorizing contrapuntal uses of chromatic semitones, providing an alternative to prevalent classifications by interval of triadic root or bass motion. The article distinguishes three chromatic semitone types: (1) normative/expressive, (2) chromatically deflected leading tones, and (3) chromatically thwarted leading tones. For each type, the article discusses representative examples drawn from motets and madrigals by Orlando di Lasso, Giaches de Wert, Luca Marenzio, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Alfonso Fontanelli, and Carlo Gesualdo, and considers how the chromatic semitones express the poetic texts.
{"title":"An Intervallic Approach to Sixteenth-Century Chromaticism","authors":"John Turci-Escobar","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9143197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9143197","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article proposes an intervallic approach to classifying and interpreting sixteenth-century chromaticism. The approach is based on a distinction between active leading tones, which imply resolution by diatonic semitone, and stable notes, which do not. This distinction underlies a dyadic approach to categorizing contrapuntal uses of chromatic semitones, providing an alternative to prevalent classifications by interval of triadic root or bass motion. The article distinguishes three chromatic semitone types: (1) normative/expressive, (2) chromatically deflected leading tones, and (3) chromatically thwarted leading tones. For each type, the article discusses representative examples drawn from motets and madrigals by Orlando di Lasso, Giaches de Wert, Luca Marenzio, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Alfonso Fontanelli, and Carlo Gesualdo, and considers how the chromatic semitones express the poetic texts.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90049752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9143190
Mariusz Kozak
This article explores the nature of metrical knowledge underlying Justin London's many-meters hypothesis. It argues that meter is a form of culturally situated kinesthetic knowledge, or a knowledge of what it feels like to move to music in a particular way. This reframing of meter focuses on its technical and bodily dimensions, which links the analysis of meter with issues of social inclusion and exclusion, of learning and unlearning, and of habit and novelty. The article illustrates the implications of this approach with examples from recent progressive metal, where musicians manipulate the backbeat to present listeners with affordances for the enactment of different forms of time.
{"title":"Feeling Meter","authors":"Mariusz Kozak","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9143190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9143190","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the nature of metrical knowledge underlying Justin London's many-meters hypothesis. It argues that meter is a form of culturally situated kinesthetic knowledge, or a knowledge of what it feels like to move to music in a particular way. This reframing of meter focuses on its technical and bodily dimensions, which links the analysis of meter with issues of social inclusion and exclusion, of learning and unlearning, and of habit and novelty. The article illustrates the implications of this approach with examples from recent progressive metal, where musicians manipulate the backbeat to present listeners with affordances for the enactment of different forms of time.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73342517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9143204
C. Duke
There is growing recognition that Richard Wagner's mature works—the music dramas—owed much to earlier nineteenth-century opera. In the often-contentious area of Wagnerian form, analysts have tended to draw more on Wagner's writings and the Formenlehre tradition than on operatic models, but recent studies by Karol Berger and Ji-Yeon Lee have shown examples of opera-specific formal types in the music dramas. This article demonstrates Wagner's continued use of one such formal type—lyric form (AABA or AABC)—in five examples from Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. The first part of this article proposes a conceptual revision of lyric form as a conventional configuration of both music and text, which are united by a shared set of music-rhetorical functions. The second part shows how Wagner's lyric forms integrate into the surrounding dramatic continuity as extroverted, performative monologues within realistic conversations. The third part analyzes the much “looser” lyric form in “Wotan's Farewell” from the end of Die Walküre, which displays both Wotan's intimate, self-expressive communication and Wagner's increasing flexibility with the template. These analyses show that operatic formal types were compatible with Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk aesthetic, and the analytic method suggests a path toward further engagement with other nineteenth-century opera and other genres that combine music, text, and dramatic storytelling.
{"title":"Lyric Forms as “Performed” Speech in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre","authors":"C. Duke","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9143204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9143204","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 There is growing recognition that Richard Wagner's mature works—the music dramas—owed much to earlier nineteenth-century opera. In the often-contentious area of Wagnerian form, analysts have tended to draw more on Wagner's writings and the Formenlehre tradition than on operatic models, but recent studies by Karol Berger and Ji-Yeon Lee have shown examples of opera-specific formal types in the music dramas. This article demonstrates Wagner's continued use of one such formal type—lyric form (AABA or AABC)—in five examples from Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. The first part of this article proposes a conceptual revision of lyric form as a conventional configuration of both music and text, which are united by a shared set of music-rhetorical functions. The second part shows how Wagner's lyric forms integrate into the surrounding dramatic continuity as extroverted, performative monologues within realistic conversations. The third part analyzes the much “looser” lyric form in “Wotan's Farewell” from the end of Die Walküre, which displays both Wotan's intimate, self-expressive communication and Wagner's increasing flexibility with the template. These analyses show that operatic formal types were compatible with Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk aesthetic, and the analytic method suggests a path toward further engagement with other nineteenth-century opera and other genres that combine music, text, and dramatic storytelling.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86389297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9143218
Nicole Biamonte
{"title":"The Musical Language of Rock","authors":"Nicole Biamonte","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9143218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9143218","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78747699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00222909-9124750
M. Bell
Much of Tchaikovsky's music for the ballets Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker exhibits what Harald Krebs calls metrical dissonance: the juxtaposition or superimposition of noncoincident pulses and rhythmic patterns. This article shows how the dances of the composer's collaborators, Enrico Cecchetti, Antonietta Dell'Era, Lev Ivanov, and Marius Petipa, respond to and participate in these metrical dissonances. The first part of the article defines metrical dissonance, the processes that transform it, and the related but distinct phenomenon of metric type. The second part presents four choreomusical analyses that draw on archival dance notation and videos of present-day performances.
{"title":"Danses Fantastiques","authors":"M. Bell","doi":"10.1215/00222909-9124750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9124750","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Much of Tchaikovsky's music for the ballets Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker exhibits what Harald Krebs calls metrical dissonance: the juxtaposition or superimposition of noncoincident pulses and rhythmic patterns. This article shows how the dances of the composer's collaborators, Enrico Cecchetti, Antonietta Dell'Era, Lev Ivanov, and Marius Petipa, respond to and participate in these metrical dissonances. The first part of the article defines metrical dissonance, the processes that transform it, and the related but distinct phenomenon of metric type. The second part presents four choreomusical analyses that draw on archival dance notation and videos of present-day performances.","PeriodicalId":45025,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82282979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}