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Corporeal Musical Structure: A Gestural-Kinesthetic Approach to Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Jocelyn Ho
The music of Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II (1994) entails a procession of discrete gestures that are delineated by moments of repose. The performer’s grasp of the piece lies in its physicality of movement: each gesture and in-between stillness are both heard and felt as an aggregate of velocities, directions, and intentions of the body. Drawing upon Carrie Noland’s concept of “vitality affects
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Rebonds: Structural Affordances, Negotiation, and Creation Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Ben Duinker
This paper presents a comparative recording analysis of the seminal work for solo percussion Rebonds (Iannis Xenakis, 1989), in order to demonstrate how performances of a musical work can reveal—or even create—aspects of musical structure that score-centered analysis cannot illuminate. In doing so I engage with the following questions. What does a pluralistic, dynamic conception of structure look like
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The Logic of Six-Based Minor for Harmonic Analyses of Popular Music Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Trevor de Clercq
Harmonic analyses of popular music typically take the minor tonic to be Roman numeral “one.” By nature, this “one-based” approach requires a new numbering scheme when songs shift between relative key centers. Recent scholarship has argued, however, that popular music often involves ambiguity between relative tonalities, as exemplified in the “Axis” progression, if not sometimes a tonal fusion of two
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Review of Laura Emmery, Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets: A Study in Sketches (Routledge, 2020) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Peter Smucker
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Review of Megan Kaes Long, Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectation at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2020) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Gregory Barnett
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Generic Norms, Irony, and Authenticity in the AABA Songs of the Rolling Stones, 1963–1971 Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-12-01 David S. Carter
AABA form was in decline in popular music in the 1960s, yet the Rolling Stones made extensive use of it at a crucial point in their career. In this article I examine the relationship between Jagger-Richards AABA songs released between 1963 and 1971 and established AABA norms. I use a corpus of 138 AABA songs (112 by other artists and 26 by Jagger-Richards) to compare the Stones’ approach to elements
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Review of John Paul Ito, Focal Impulse Theory: Musical Expression, Meter, and the Body (Indiana University Press, 2020) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Jonathan De Souza
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Gender Identity and Gestural Representations in Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartet No. 2 Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Laura Emmery
Jonathan Harvey debuted several novel techniques and elements in his String Quartet No. 2—“temperature” and gender markings, unique to this piece, and the melodic chain technique, a method which he continued to use in his subsequent quartets. Though the melodic chain technique is decipherable from score analysis, and has been explained by the composer in interviews, Harvey’s temperature and gender
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Cage’s Imitation Game: Cheap Imitation and Song Books through the sketches Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Jeffrey Perry
The theme of John Cage’s Song Books (1970), according to Cage, is contained in the statement “We connect Satie with Thoreau” (".fn_cite($cage_1970).", 1). Previous studies of Cage’s Song Books have not asked what I feel to be obvious questions: how, precisely, does Cage connect Satie with Thoreau? To what end? And how does Cage connect to Satie and Thoreau (and to the other sources from which he borrows)
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Macroharmonic Progressions through the Discrete Fourier Transform Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Matt Chiu
This article examines macroharmony through the lens of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) using computational analysis. It first introduces the DFT, giving an interpretive framework to understand the theory of chord quality first introduced by Ian Quinn (2007) before extending the theory to macroharmonies. Subsequently, the paper discusses different approaches—including different weighting and windowing
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Giving Voice to a Foxtrot from Auschwitz-Birkenau Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Patricia Hall
The Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum preserves a number of manuscripts of popular songs arranged by members of the Auschwitz I Men’s Orchestra. These songs, written with great care in black ink on Beethoven Papier brand music paper, often bear highly ironic, but also tragically relevant titles, such as “Letters That Never Arrived,” “Hours That One Can Never Forget,” “Sing
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Review of Malawey, Victoria, A Blaze of Light in Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice (Oxford University Press, 2020) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Michèle Duguay
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Melody on the Threshold in Spectral Music Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 James Donaldson
This article explores the expressive and formal role of melody in spectral and “post-spectral” music. I propose that melody can function within a spectral aesthetic, expanding the project of relating unfamiliar musical parameters to “liquidate frozen categories” (Grisey 2008 [1982], 45). Accordingly, I show how melody can shift in and out of focus relative to other musical elements. I adopt Grisey’s
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The Functions of Continuous Processes in Contemporary Electronic Dance Music Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Jeremy W. Smith
This article discusses the functions of continuous processes in contemporary electronic dance music (EDM), providing an analytical framework for discussing their structural and aesthetic roles in this repertoire. Continuous processes are musical gestures with continuous changes to musical parameters, rather than discrete, “step-by-step” ones. Examples include pitch slides (glissandos), crescendos,
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Flexible Ostinati, Groove, and Formal Process in Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Antares Boyle
Repetition in the music of pianist/composer Craig Taborn engenders diverse temporal experiences at both local and global scales. At the local level, distinctive repetitions that I term flexible ostinati share significant features with the cyclic materials often observed in groove-based musics: they comprise a repetitive, omnipresent stream within the overall texture, provide a rapid isochronous pulse
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What Are the Truly Aural Skills? Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Timothy Chenette
I argue that current models of aural skills instruction are too strongly linked to music theory curricula. I examine harmonic dictation as a case study, demonstrating that the system of roman-numeral/inversion-symbol labels can interfere with our ability to determine what exactly students are hearing and can distract students from more directly perceptual goals. A pilot study suggests that focusing
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Reframing Generated Rhythms and the Metric Matrix as Projections of Higher-Dimensional Lattices in Scott Joplin’s Music Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Joshua W. Hahn
Generated rhythms and the metric matrix can both be modelled by time-domain equivalents to projections of higher-dimensional lattices. Scott Joplin’s music is a case study for how these structures can illuminate both musical and philosophical aims. Musically, lattice projections show how Joplin creates a sense of multiple beat streams unfolding at once. Philosophically, these structures sonically reinforce
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Asymmetrical Meter, Ostinati, and Cycles in the Music of Tigran Hamasyan Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Scott C. Schumann
Tigran Hamasyan (b. 1987) is an Armenian jazz pianist and composer whose music has been described as “grounded in serious reinterpretations of Armenian culture via his take on Bach, French romantics, jazz, dubstep, metal, and modern electronic music” (".fn_cite_year($manukian_2018).", 637). Hamasyan has recorded thirteen studio albums between the years of 2006–2020, and analyzing these recordings suggests
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Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Violin Phase and the Experience of Time, or Why Does Process Music Work? Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Mariusz Kozak
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War and the Musical Grotesque in Crumb’s “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Abigail Shupe
This analysis interprets Crumb’s setting of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” as a musical memorial. I situate this song within larger memorial culture, Civil War memory, and musical memorials to show how it commemorates and criticizes official narratives of the Civil War. While the first three verses present an earnest version of the song that celebrates military power, the fourth quotes Mahler to
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Rethinking Aural Skills Instruction through Cognitive Research Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Elizabeth West Marvin
This essay responds to three papers appearing in this issue that relate music-cognitive research to aural skills pedagogy. Gary S. Karpinski focuses on tonic inference as support for do-based minor solfège pedagogy. My discussion supports this position, with evidence from key-profile experiments and corpus analyses. Timothy Chenette proposes a perceptually based learning sequence for aural skills instruction
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A Cognitive Basis for Choosing a Solmization System Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Gary S. Karpinski
This article focuses on the perception and cognition involved in music listening skills as essential criteria in selecting solmization systems. Drawing on many aural key-identification studies performed by various researchers, and on the model for music perception developed by Karpinski (".fn_cite_year($karpinski_1990).") and formalized in Karpinski (".fn_cite_year($karpinski_2000)."), it concludes
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Review of Rethinking Reich, Edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn (Oxford University Press, 2019) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Orit Hilewicz
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Review of The Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory, edited by Alexander Rehding and Steven Rings (Oxford University Press, 2019) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Antares Boyle,Rebecca Leydon,Paul Sherrill,Jeffrey Swinkin
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Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, op. 33a Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Keith Salley
This essay considers the sound of Arnold Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, op. 33a, discussing aesthetic effects of combinatoriality and pitch repetition. In taking John Rahn’s general advice regarding listening to Schoenberg “late at night with the lights off,” two compelling parallels with psycholinguistic phenomena emerge—one dealing with semantic satiation, and the other with a related experience called
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Rhythmic Techniques in Deaf Hip Hop Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Anabel Maler,Robert Komaniecki
The art of signed music involves the use of rhythmicized signs from a signed language, such as American Sign Language (ASL), in a musical context. Signed music encompasses a variety of subgenres, including ASL hip hop or “dip hop.” A typical dip hop performance involves a Deaf or hard-of-hearing artist simultaneously performing vocalized and signed rapping over a looped background beat. Although dip
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Cantopop and Speech-Melody Complex Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Edwin K. C. Li
It is generally accepted that speech and melody are distinctive perceptual categories, and that one is able to overcome perceptual ambiguity to categorize acoustic stimuli as either of the two. This article investigates native Cantonese speakers’ speech-melody experience of listening to Cantonese popular songs (henceforth Cantopop songs), a relatively uncharted territory in musicological studies. It
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Compound AABA Form and Style Distinction in Heavy Metal Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Stephen S. Hudson
This article presents a new framework for analyzing compound AABA form in heavy metal music, inspired by normative theories of form in the Formenlehre tradition. A corpus study shows that a particular riff-based version of compound AABA, with a specific style of buildup intro (Attas 2015) and other characteristic features, is normative in mainstream styles of the metal genre. Within this norm, individual
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Schoenberg’s Cinematographic Blueprint: A Programmatic Analysis ofBegleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene(1929–1930) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Orit Hilewicz
This study examines Arnold Schoenberg’s only published music for film,Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene[Accompaniment to a Film Scene], op. 34 (1929–30). Although not composed for an existing film scene, evidence ofBegleitungsmusik’s cinematic aspirations motivate this analysis, which approaches the composition as a cinematographic blueprint: a design (or program) for a scene that at the same
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Gould’s Creaking Chair, Schoenberg’s Metric Clarity Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2021-03-01 Richard Beaudoin
The audible creaking of Glenn Gould’s loose-jointed piano chair has historically been the subject of apologetic liner notes and recording studio memoirs. These chair creaks are here recognized as “sounded movements” of Gould’s body. This article triangulates the score of Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19, no. 1, published analyses of its unique rhythmic unfolding, and new micro-temporal
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Blues Lyric Formulas in Early Country Music, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Nicholas Stoia
This article briefly recounts recent work identifying the most common lyric formulas in early blues and then demonstrates the prevalence of these formulas in early country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. The study shows how the preference for certain formulas in prewar country music—like the preference for the same formulas in prewar blues—reflects the social instability of the time, and
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A “Proto-Theme” in Some of J. S. Bach’s Fugal Works Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 John S. Reef
This article focuses on a pattern of harmony and voice leading that appears, elaborated, in several fugue expositions (and generically related passages) by J. S. Bach. I contextualize this pattern in examples of “schematic” Baroque fugal writing and suggest that for Bach it functions as a sort of “proto-theme,” with respect to which certain expositions stand as “variations.” These expositions eschew
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Mapping Ravel’s “La vallée des cloches” Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Kyle Fyr
This article makes a case for constructing a map of Maurice Ravel’s “La vallée des cloches” (The valley of the bells) by showing how the process of mapping the piece can provide valuable insights from a variety of perspectives, such as: 1) offering insights into how the piece’s many bell sounds are individuated from each other and interact with one another in creating intricate formal and temporal
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Computer-aided Analysis of Sonority in the French Motet Repertory, ca. 1300–1350 Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Karen Desmond,Emily Hopkins,Samuel Howes,Julie E. Cumming
This article analyzes the distribution of three- and four-voice vertical sonorities in a repertoire of French ars antiqua and ars nova motets. Rather than selecting the subjectively important sonorities within a piece—an effort that would rely on the analyst’s judgment of the overarching contrapuntal goals—this study uses computational musicological methods to analyze and categorize the distribution
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Shaping Form: Performances as Analyses of Cyclic Macroform in Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19 (1911), in the Recordings of Eduard Steuermann and Other Pianists Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Christian Utz,Thomas Glaser
Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke (Six Little Piano Pieces), op. 19 (1911), offer a fruitful case study to examine and categorize performers’ strategies in regard to their form-shaping characteristics. A thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of 46 recordings from 41 pianists (recorded between 1925 to 2018), including six recordings from Eduard Steuermann, the leading pianist of
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Analyzing Schoenberg’s War Compositions as Satire and Sincerity: A Comparative Analysis of Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte and A Survivor from Warsaw Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Joon Park
This paper presents a comparative analysis of Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte op. 41 (1942) and A Survivor from Warsaw op. 46 (1947) to show that Schoenberg’s compositional decisions for each piece reflect the public’s (and his) change of attitude regarding the historical events surrounding World War II. In particular, I argue that Ode frequently features humorous depiction of the Nazi regime through various
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A Transformational Approach to Gesture in Shō Performance Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Toru Momii
Through an analysis of contemporary shō performance practice, this article explores the relationship between instrumental gesture and modal theory in contemporary gagaku. I demonstrate that the idiosyncratic arrangement of the pipes on the shō is closely related to the pitch structure and tonal function of the aitake pitch clusters. My analysis synthesizes two approaches. First, I adopt David Lewin’s
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Instrumental Transformations in Heinrich Biber’s Mystery Sonatas Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Jonathan De Souza
Each of Heinrich Biber’s Mystery Sonatas features a distinct violin tuning. How do these scordatura relate to standard tuning? How might they affect the sonatas’ musical organization and players’ experience? Transformational voice-leading theory helps to reveal overlapping categories here. Quintal scordatura include adjacent-string fifths, creating zones where notated and sounding intervals match.
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Review of Jason Yust, Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form (Oxford University Press, 2018) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-12-01 Leah Frederick
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“All of the Rules of Jazz” Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Brian A. Miller
Though improvising computer systems are hardly new, jazz has recently become the focus of a number of novel computer music projects aimed at convincingly improvising alongside humans, with a particular focus on the use of machine learning to imitate human styles. The attempt to implement a sort of Turing test for jazz, and interest from organizations like DARPA in the results, raises important questions
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Music Theory for the “Weaker Sex”: Oliveria Prescott’s Columns for The Girl’s Own Paper Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Rachel Lumsden
In this article, I examine a cluster of music theory essays by Oliveria Louisa Prescott (1842–1917), which were published between 1886 and 1891 in The Girl’s Own Paper (TGOP), the most popular periodical for young women in Victorian England. Although little known today, Prescott sustained a vibrant musical career in London as a composer and teacher, and her articles on music theory regularly appeared
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Review of Keith Waters, Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea (Oxford University Press, 2019) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Ben Baker
[1] Keith Waters’s Postbop Jazz in the 1960s (2019) brings together more than two decades of work by one of the most prolific jazz scholars in music theory. Over the course of his academic career, Waters has focused consistently on the practices of a particular set of jazz musicians in the 1960s. During this period, the output of musicians like Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick
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(Per)forming Open Form: A Case Study with Earle Brown’s Novara Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Drake Andersen
Most accounts of Earle Brown’s open form compositions focus on the notated qualities of individual events in the score. However, the conductor’s role in ensuring continuity and formal coherence within a performance is rarely acknowledged. In this article, I analyze recordings of three performances of Brown conducting his composition Novara (1962), two with the Virtuoso Ensemble in 1966 and one with
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Prolongational Closure in the Lieder of Fanny Hensel Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Stephen Rodgers,Tyler Osborne
In this article we explore Fanny Hensel’s songs that end without cadences but instead with what William Caplin (2018) calls “prolongational closure.” These songs, most of which come from the 1820s, are some of the earliest examples of piece-ending prolongational closure in the repertoire and thus offer important models for understanding how the technique was deployed by later composers. We propose
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Review of Jennifer Iverson, Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde (Oxford University Press, 2019) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Matthew Mendez
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Harmonizing Chorales Systematically: A Translation of G. H. Stölzel’s Kurzer und gründlicher Unterricht (Brief and Thorough Instruction), ms. c.1719–1749 Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Derek Remeš
This article provides the first English translation of a little-known manuscript treatise by the central-German composer and Capellmeister, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749), titled Kürzer und gründliche Unterricht (Brief and Thorough Instruction, ca. 1719–49). Stölzel’s method frames speculative theory (trias harmonica and the tabula tradition) practically in terms of thoroughbass in order to
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Resolving Tensions between Outer Form and Inner Form in Fugue: A Comparative Analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor (WTC I) Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Sarah Marlowe
This study offers a comparative analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor, from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I (WTC I). Detailed examination of multiple divergent readings of the same musical excerpts raises important questions about Schenkerian theory and its application to fugal textures. I suggest that analytical discrepancies arise primarily when voice-leading concerns are not completely disentangled
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The Cultural Significance of Timbre Analysis Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Megan L. Lavengood
This article is in three interrelated parts. In Part 1, I present a methodology for analyzing timbre that combines spectrogram analysis and cultural analysis. I define a number of acoustic timbral attributes to which one may attune when analyzing timbre, organized as oppositional pairs of marked and unmarked terms, in order to both aid in spectrogram analysis and account for some of this cultural and
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Retrospective Time and the Subdominant Past Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Kyle Hutchinson
This paper examines analytic possibilities afforded by understanding exceptional uses of the subdominant as a hermeneutic signal of the past tense in contemporary Broadway megamusicals. While an emerging consensus in studies of pop music holds that the subdominant chord can comprise a variety of functions beyond its traditional predominant role, to suggest as much already betrays an approach that is
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Music Theory and the White Racial Frame Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Philip A. Ewell
For over twenty years, music theory has tried to diversify with respect to race, yet the field today remains remarkably white, not only in terms of the people who practice music theory but also in the race of the composers and theorists whose work music theory privileges. In this paper, a critical-race examination of the field of music theory, I try to come to terms with why this is so. I posit that
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Harmonic, Syntactic, and Motivic Parameters of Phrase in Hip-Hop Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Kyle Adams
This article builds on existing scholarship, both in art music and in popular music, to craft a conception of “phrase” in hip-hop. After briefly contextualizing my ideas, I describe in detail three parameters that can define hip-hop phrases: harmony, syntax, and motive, with examples of each. I then present two in-depth analyses of verses showing how these parameters interact with one another. Finally
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Consonance, Dissonance, and Formal Proportions in Two Works by Sofia Gubaidulina Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Noah Kahrs
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
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Orchestral Tissue, Subordinate Arabesques, and Turning Inward in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Gurminder K. Bhogal
In response to Maurice Ravel’s puzzling description of Boléro as “orchestral tissue without music,” this article explores how he privileges timbre over techniques traditionally associated with musical development. Even as I acknowledge longstanding perceptions of Boléro as a piece that is characterized by monotony and repetition, I show how Ravel relies on alternating decorative and arabesque melodies
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Recapitulatory Compressions in Some Texted and Instrumental Works by Schubert Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Jonathan Guez
The thematic organization of musical reprises and recapitulations has not received as much attention as that of expositions. One reason for this is the assumption that recapitulations are simply retracings of thematic paths already plotted in the exposition, with their tonal profiles adjusted to remain in the tonic. The present article seeks to complexify this view by devoting analytic and interpretive
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Dynamic Range Processing and Its Influence on Perceived Timing in Electronic Dance Music Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen,Bjørnar E. Sandvik,Jon Marius Aareskjold-Drecker
In this article, we explore the extent to which dynamic range processing (such as compression and sidechain compression) influences our perception of a sound signal’s temporal placement in music. Because compression reshapes the sound signal’s envelope, scholars have previously noted that certain uses of sidechain compression can produce peculiar rhythmic effects. In this article, we have tried to
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Climax Building in Verismo Opera Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Ji Yeon Lee
This article examines the process of dynamic building and subsiding in verismo opera. Departing from groundswell originally drawn from Julian Budden’s analysis of bel canto opera, I propose a new dynamic paradigm, the climax archetype—consisting of initiation, intensification, highpoint, and abatement—and its operational parameters. To appropriately respond to diverse dynamic structures, variants of
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Portmantonality and Babbitt’s Poetics of Double Entendre Music Theory Online Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Joshua Banks Mailman
This essay presents a theory of musical and verbal double entendre inspired by and applicable to the late-period music of Milton Babbi . Rather than assuming the appropriateness of any single method (which might tend toward singularity of meaning), a number of approaches are applied to three late works: primarily his Whirled Series (1987), and secondarily his Canonical Form (1983) and Gloss on ’Round