Analysis =>Anton Webern: Opus 24, First Movement
Ryan M. Hare
: Only an idiot would believe
: that "successful serial music" *doesn't* depend on the row one chooses to
: explore. One doesn't pick a row, one *composes* a row according to what
: musical relationships are to be exploited in the piece.
: I'm sorry if you're starting to feel like my whipping boy, but I would say,
: with all due respect, that this is an excellent example of what is wrong with
: too many analyses of atonal pieces in general and serial pieces in particular.
: You've given us an interesting factoid about the row form Webern used, but have
: you really said anything about the piece?
: If I gave an exegesis on the properties of the Eb major scale, would that be
: an analysis of the Eroica Symphony?
: Did you know that a perfectly detailed analysis of a serial piece can be
: given without even mentioning the row forms and the operations they undergo?
: (The analysis in *Basic Atonal Theory* which I cited above is a good example.)
: I'm sorry to single out your analysis so, but I think that this is a very
: common misunderstanding, and didn't want to miss the opportunity to say so.
All good comments. I agree with what Craig says. It is a real mistake to
analyze a serial work solely from the basis of the rows that were used. I
recall reading something by Schoenberg that said as much, but in rather
strong terms.
A perfect example of this for me is Lev Koblyakov's _Boulez: A World of
Harmony_ which is largely an analysis of _Le Marteau sans maitre_. It's
nothing more than a compilation of grids and charts detailing the intricate
serial procedures used by Boulez. It's very impressive that he has
able to work it all out (and his analysis is a valuable reference), but
his analysis says absolutely *nothing* about the music.
Ryan Hare
rh...@u.washington.edu
clovis lark
>Anton Webern:
>Concert for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Trumpet, Trombone, Violin,
>Viola, and Piano, Op.24, First movement.
>A piece of serialist music that doesn't make me barf...
Your analysis below, while thorough, leaves out the important palindromic
structure of the row itself, wherein it is divided into 4 three note groups,
which are themselves assembled: P, RI, R, I. Also missing is the structural
nature of register and tempo fluctuation.
>In my analysis of this piece, I encountered many instances of 12-tone
>rows overlapping with 1, 3, or 6 tones shared between two rows. I
>realized that this was not generally done, and wondered why Webern had
>pulled it off.
>The set matrix for this piece is
> I(0) I(11) I(3) I(4) I(8) I(7) I(9) I(5) I(6) I(1) I(2) I(10)
>P( 0) B A# D D# G F# G# E F C C# A R(0)
>P( 1) C B D# E G# G A F F# C# D A R(1)
>P( 9) G# G B C E D# F C# D A A# F# R(9)
>P( 8) G F# A# B D# D E C C# G# A F R(8)
>P( 4) D# D F# G B A# C G# A E F C# R(4)
>P( 5) E D# G G# C B C# A A# F F# D R(5)
>P( 3) D C# F F# A# A B G G# D# E C R(3)
>P( 7) F# F A A# D C# D# B C G G# E R(7)
>P( 6) F E G# A C# C D A# B F# G D# R(6)
>P(11) A# A C# D F# F G D# E B C G# R(11)
>P(10) A G# C C# F E F# D D# A# B G R(10)
>P( 2) C# C E F A G# A# F# G D D# B R(2)
> RI0 RI11 RI3 RI4 RI8 RI7 RI9 RI5 RI6 RI1 RI2 RI10
>
> This set matrix is peculiar in that it is made up of 24 disctinct
>6-tone rows, paired together to form the 48 12-tone rows of the matrix.
>Each 6-tone row is used twice.
> For example, the first half of P(0) is the same as the second half of
>RI(7). For our purposes, I will notate these as "P(0)A" and "RI(7)B",
>with "A" denoting the first half, and "B" denoting the seconad half of a
>particular tone row.
>Other equivalent sets:
>P(1)A = RI(8)B P(1)B = RI(8)A
>P(2)A = RI(9)B P(2)B = RI(9)A
>P(3)A = RI(10)B P(3)B = RI(10)A
>P(4)A = RI(11)B P(4)B = RI(11)A
>P(5)A = RI(0)B P(5)B = RI(0)A
>P(6)A = RI(1)B P(6)B = RI(1)A
>:
>:
>The pattern becomes apparent. Of course, the retrogrades of a pair of
>equivalent 6-tone rows will also be the same, so R(1)A = I(8)B;
>R(1)B = I(8)A, and so forth.
What follows below should be prefaced by George Perle's remarks governing
Allen Forte's STRUCTURE OF ATONAL MUSIC found in "PITCH-CLASS SET ANALYSIS:
AN EVALUATION" printed the Spring 1990 issue of the JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY.
There is nothing that comes from Webern, or Berg or Schoenberg for that matter,
that shows this to be their way of composing or even thinking of their music
in retrospect. There is nothing in the numbers below which show any generative
aspect for Webern's composition. As Perle says, "irrelevant to my experience
as a composer, to my perceptions as a listener, and to my discoveries as an
analyst."
It should further be noted that Forte's previous publications prior to the
publication of this system included, significantly, a manual on SNOBOL
programming (a computer language). I would suggest that he devised this
system as a means to inputting works into computers so that they would spit
out a statistical incidence of pitch sets which would then be used as evidence
for a certain composer's authorship (70% of such and such means it must be
Bartok), in essence, a primitive form of style analysis. I fail to see how
this sheds any light on this gorgeous work.
>To best illustrate how it works, translate the Prime into Normal Form,
>where it becomes:
>[0, 11, 3, 4, 8, 7] [9, 5, 6, 1, 2, 10]
>to invert it, we subtract from 12 (in MOD 12):
>[0, 1, 9, 8, 4, 5, 3, 7, 6, 11, 10, 2]
>raise the row by 7 semitones (in MOD 12):
>[7, 8, 4, 3, 11, 0, 10, 2, 1, 6, 5, 9]
>express it in retrograde
>[9, 5, 6, 1, 2, 10] [0, 11, 3, 4, 8, 7]
>and compare this (retrograde inversion +7) to the P(0).
> At first I presumed this was a hidden natural behaviuor of set
>matrices, but a quick comparison showed this to be a false presumption.
>The queer symmetry of this row allowed Webern to overlap his rows in
>groups of up to 6. It begs the question of whether successful serialist
>music may depend not only on the composer's gift for arrangement but also
>on the row he chooses to explore. As the twig is bent, so they say, grows
>the tree.
> Since the entire matrix is determined by P(0), it would be interesting
>to see what's so special about Webern's P(0) that kaes the symmetry
>happen.
>By our previous work, we can show that:
> 12 - [P(x,y)] = RI(x+z,y-n)
> where x= the row number (0-11)
> y= the place in that row (0-11)
> z= the transposition offset from zero
> n= the degree of symmetry (must be a factor of 12)
> In his matrix, Webern chose z=7 and n=6.
> Another fact: In matrices such as these, P(0,n) always equals z.
>For example in a set matrix of this kind where P(0) is an ascending
>chromatic scale, then I(0) will be a descending chromatic scale, and
>RI(0) will ascend again. If n=3 then P(0,n)=2. The ascending RI scale
>that ends with a 2 is RI(2), the value of z. This works for any value of
>n, because the chromatic scale is completely symmetrical, but it would
>work for any matrix of this sort with a fixed value for n. Observe this
>in Webern's set.
Craig Weston
>Craig Weston <cwe...@iastate.edu> wrote:
>>Did you know that a perfectly detailed analysis of a serial piece can be
>>given without even mentioning the row forms and the operations they undergo?
>>(The analysis in *Basic Atonal Theory* which I cited above is a good example.)
>>
>But Webern and Schoenberg use row forms to define their classical forms, so only
>an analysis of the piece which ignores its formal aspects need not include a
>discussion of row forms.
>
Actually, I think it is the relationships built into the row-forms which define
larger forms, etc., but we're really picking nits here. The important point is
that there are many many details about a serial piece which "12-counting" will
not reveal. Indeed, *after* having ellucidated some of those details, row-form
relationships can be helpful in discussing larger formal relationships.
__________________________________________________________________
|Craig Weston--Assistant Professor of Music Theory, Composition, |
| & Electronic/Computer Music, Iowa State University|
| |
|e-mail: cwe...@iastate.edu |
|WWW: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cweston/homepage.html |
|________________________________________________________________|
Greg Dorter
>Uhhhh, Greg, does that mean that only an analysis of Eroica that
>ignores formal aspects will not contain a study of the connotation
>web formed by the key of Eb major?
Not "will not," but "need not." You can discuss Webern's pitch
organisation without discussing his row organisation, but you cannot
discuss his formal organisation without discussing his row organisation.
Greg Dorter <gdo...@julian.uwo.ca>
University of Western Ontario
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Greg Dorter
Craig Weston <cwe...@iastate.edu> wrote:
>Well, of course, there is a certain ineffable quality to any artwork
>which no theory can "eff." But I'd suggest you're being a bit too
>cynical--an insightful analysis can do more than "describe the pitch
>or rhythmic, etc. organisation of a piece, tell us about the structure
>of a piece and how it is put together." It can also place a piece into
>context, in terms of a genre, a composer's life work, her/his predelictions,
>etc.
But how does it do this? By describing the pitch or rhythmic, etc. organisation
of a piece, telling us about the structure of a piece and how it is put together, and
comparing how this is done in other works. Maybe defining a genre as works which have
these certain properties, but, as you say, it doesn't get at the "eff." How do we get at the
"eff?" I'll answer that after I figure out how to get at the meaning of life.
Unlike many people cynical of theory, I was orignally very attracted to theory.
I saw it as the only way one could understand a piece of music, and I thought
the more I learned about theory, the more I would learn about music, and the better
a composer I would be. Well, having studied Schenker, set theory, 12-tone theory,
and having read big shot theorists like Forte, Morris, Lewin, Babbitt, etc. I have: learned
a lot more about music theory; I have learned to program my computer, first in Pascal,
now in C; I have learned about finite algebra; but I have learned very little that helps
me understand music, or that helps me compose music. Obviously one need know a
certain amount about set theory and 12-tone theory to write atonal music, just as one
need to know how ro harmonize a chorale to write tonal music, but I found that a
comprehensive knowledge of these theories was conterproductive to musical
enlightenment. You can't prove music. I have learned more about music and composing
from reading the egomaniacal, cosmic babblings of Stockhausen, than I have from the
impressively organized, rigorous treatments of a composer such as Morris. Morris' work
facinates me. It does not help me with music. I do not think I will change your mind, nor
will you change mine, but it is fun trying. I guess I am siding with Rick St. Clair.
>And perhaps most importantly, it can suggest metaphors which are
>appropraite to "overleaf" onto the piece (metaphors being, IMHO, one of
>our tools of deepest understanding.)
To borrow from Matt, I'm unclear on what you mean by this.
Matthew H. Fields
Greg Dorter <gdo...@julian.uwo.ca> wrote:
>fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
>>Uhhhh, Greg, does that mean that only an analysis of Eroica that
>>ignores formal aspects will not contain a study of the connotation
>>web formed by the key of Eb major?
>Not "will not," but "need not." You can discuss Webern's pitch
>organisation without discussing his row organisation, but you cannot
>discuss his formal organisation without discussing his row organisation.
Two points here.
1) The Eb major stuff is well-enough covered in common-practice texts.
2) Finding the row, listing its qualities, and identifying all instances
of the row in the piece does not suffice to show his form, I'm sure
you'll agree (that was Craig's main point).
Point 3, because I changed my mind:
Since the row is the end-product of the composing of several patterns,
you can say pretty much everything by discovering those patterns and
saying things in terms of those patterns, leaving the row itself implicit.
This may not be the expedient way of doing things, but I really don't
see why it shouldn't be possible. In some ways, it probably more closely
resembles the way all but Boulez and Babbitt hear e.g. the 1er Kantate
(i.e. in terms of highly unified material that generates the form, but
not necessarily in terms of the exact mosaics of e.g.simultaneous rows
that generate the materials).
Such a presentation might be especially interesting to composers because
the limits of memory and mind have a lot to do with how, and to whom,
one can be expressive with this kind of material...
Craig Weston
Matthew H. Fields
Jose Marques <jmar...@super.zippo.com> wrote:
>rh...@saul3.u.washington.edu (Ryan M. Hare) wrote:
>>It is a real mistake to
>>analyze a serial work solely from the basis of the rows that were used. I
>>recall reading something by Schoenberg that said as much, but in rather
>>strong terms.
Or perhaps it's important to do that, but then to go further?
>But Schoenberg also said things that could legitimate this sort of
>analysis. See _Style and Idea_ p.113:
> "The unity of musical space demands an absolute
> and unitarian perception. In this space ... there is
> no absolute down, no right or left, forward or backward.
> Every musical configuration, every movement of tones
> has to be comprehended primarily as a mutual relation
> of sounds, of oscilatory vibrations, appearing at
> different places and times. To the imaginative and
> creative faculty, relations in the material sphere are
> as independent from directions or planes as materials
> objects are, in their sphere, to our perceptive faculties."
I'm sorry, I don't understand how this shows that you really should
do only row analysis.
>Let's push this conception to its ultimate consequences and consider the
>possibility of making a strict inversion, or strict retrogression of a
>twelve-tone composition (I am not saying Schoenberg would endorse
>that!).
Hmmm, I've actually used exactly that procedure to generate different
sections of movements. Come to think of it, the third movement of
Berg's Lyric Suite is an ABA' form, where A' is a (slightly shortened)
retrograde of the original A.
> Should anyone say that the new piece is as "valid", in
>esthetical or artistic terms, as the original? Hardly, I believe.
In other words, a more full explanation of a piece of music is going
to have to encompass whatever orientability, direction, sense of necessary
progress and shape the piece embodies, not just its cellular fabric.
>Nevertheless the analysis presented in the message that originated this
>thread would be completely adequate to the mirror inversion of the first
>movement of Webern op. 24, provided that the obvious adjustments be
>made, substituting the inverted forms of the series for the direct forms
>and so on. I venture to say that this proves that there is something
>more in the original composition than the formal and mathematical
>relations discovered by the serial analysis.
Indeed.
Consider also, e.g., the first contrapunctus of Well-Tempered Clavier.
Several sources that I've read say that all the material in it can be
derived from a 6-voice-by-7-beat master stretto chart; at the very least,
it's clear that all the strettos actually present in the piece are subsets
of the largest stretto in the piece.
But the isolation of that largest stretto doesn't say much about the piece
that it wouldn't say were the rest of the stretti re-ordered, moved to
different pitch levels, and re-voiced. It doesn't say why the
piece should abruptly cadence to vi, or how that affects the master
stretto that follows it. It doesn't address the pedal points. It
doesn't address the fact that the piece ends on a flourish that doesn't
contain a form of the fugue subject. It doesn't address the curious
order of voice entries (I-V-V-I) at the beginning, and how that relates
to the plan of the piece as a whole. And in fact, you can address all
these points without ever isolating and analyzing the master stretto!
Matthew H. Fields
K C Moore <k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <4hcvlj$9...@news.iastate.edu>
> cwe...@iastate.edu "Craig Weston" writes:
>> To echo Matt here, this is a fascinating claim (that spelling is more
>> than notational convention in Webern et al). If you could back this up,
>> you could literally shake the foundations of contemporary music theory.
>What I would like to find is a justification, by any member of the 2nd
>Viennese school, of the restriction of the number of pc sets to 12.
The justification was simply that it was there, it had been there
for a couple of hundreds of years, and folks knew what to do with it.
Why did whole-tone scales exist, and why were they so ambiguous?
Why were fully-diminished 7th chords so full of enharmonic possibilities?
Convention. Common practice and keyboard/fretted instrument design.
But there's no reason you can't make serial music in 19-equal, or
even in a just-tuned pentatonic if you like. If your number of available
resources is small, change will be a bigger event than return; if the
number is prime, partitions that trade places with each other will have
trickier qualities...
Where does your imagination take you? Try going there, and see if you
find music that satisfies you there. In 1921 the 12-tone serial landscape
hadn't been explored. In 1937 only certain bits of it had been looked at...
Your question sounds to me a lot like something like "Why did Mozart
use so many 7-tone scales--wasn't he constricting music to a narrow
range?" To which the answer must be, well, yes, he was constricting
his music to a range that worked well with the training and equipment
of the people around him, and yet he managed to get off amazing bits
of creativity within those limitations. You don't like the example
of Mozart because he's too chromatic? OK, let's stick to Dufay. Same
thing, only when you look at his notation, you realize he limited
rhythm according to even more arcane rules...
Berg's, Schoenberg's, and Webern's exploitations of 12-tone equal
temperment weren't particularly special in that regard.
Craig Weston
>
>What I would like to find is a justification, by any member of the 2nd
>Viennese school, of the restriction of the number of pc sets to 12.
>
Could you clarify this? Do you mean restriction of the number of
pitch classes to 12? Or perhaps the number of *3-note* pc set
types (aka set classes) to 12? (i.e. if you define set type/class
as all sets equivalent under transposition alone, there are 19 3-note
set types/classes, but if you define set type/class as all sets
equivalent under transposition *or* inversion, then there are only
12 3-note set types/classes.)
I'll take a shot at your question, but let's make sure we're on the
same page first.
Ryan M. Hare
: >rh...@saul3.u.washington.edu (Ryan M. Hare) wrote:
: >>It is a real mistake to
: >>analyze a serial work solely from the basis of the rows that were used. I
: >>recall reading something by Schoenberg that said as much, but in rather
: >>strong terms.
: Or perhaps it's important to do that, but then to go further?
Note that my original post said "solely." If one starts from a row
analysis and then goes further with it, that would not be "solely"
anymore, would it? I don't mean that one shouldn't discuss row forms or
usage when analyzing a serial work, just that chasing down rows in and of
itself is not very enlightening.
Ryan Hare
rh...@u.washington.edu
Roger Lustig
>In article <4hcvlj$9...@news.iastate.edu>
> cwe...@iastate.edu "Craig Weston" writes:
>> To echo Matt here, this is a fascinating claim (that spelling is more
>> than notational convention in Webern et al). If you could back this up,
>> you could literally shake the foundations of contemporary music theory.
>What I would like to find is a justification, by any member of the 2nd
>Viennese school, of the restriction of the number of pc sets to 12.
Hello? Since when are PC sets restricted to 12? There are 12 sets
of cardinality 3 alone...
As for why there are 12 pitch classes, well, I suspect it had something
to do with the relationship between their music and the musical
traditions they were working with and reacting to; and with the
possibility of getting their music performed. After all, most
of the good performers in their time preferred to play on instruments
that used the usual 12 pitch classes.
Roger
K C Moore
cwe...@iastate.edu "Craig Weston" writes:
> Could you clarify this? Do you mean restriction of the number of
> pitch classes to 12? Or perhaps the number of *3-note* pc set
> types (aka set classes) to 12? (i.e. if you define set type/class
> as all sets equivalent under transposition alone, there are 19 3-note
> set types/classes, but if you define set type/class as all sets
> equivalent under transposition *or* inversion, then there are only
> 12 3-note set types/classes.)
The first, because it seems to me to result as much from the problem of
designing a keyboard to match the human hand with 16th and 17th C
technology as from perceptual acoustics, but I have yet to read
anything which acknowledges this.
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Craig Weston
>Returning to Webern, since there is no thematic correlaltion between the
>formal sections, either: the row forms must be discussed to understand the
>form; or Webern's forms, as he conceives them, are inaudible, because nobody
>listening thinks, "Ah, there's I9 again, we're back to the B sections." If we
>choose the latter (and that brings up the topic of analysis of the written score
>vs. of what we hear--how much weight do we give each), then we can
>discuss form without tracing the row through the piece, and perhaps we will
>have a better understanding of what we hear by not accepting a strictly
>abstract, inaudible, musical structure based on row structure. To ignore that
>there is an underlying structure which Webern has conceived strictly in terms
>of row forms, however, leaces out an important detail, which can then be
>dismissed if a more audible account of form can be posited.
Several interesting questions are raised here. Do we hear row forms? I would
have very little confidence that any listener (average or not) hears row forms
consistantly and accurately. However, there are smaller scale groupings,
relationships, motives (in the abstract, pitch-class sense), etc, built into the
row forms, and when you perform an operation on a row form, you are obviously
performing that same operation on the smaller scale groupings, relationships,
motives, etc, within that row form. I find it much more plausible that this is
what we hear--therefore, in analysis, I would generally be more concerned with
what happens to these smaller units than with what happens in the rows.
Schoenberg et al adopted serial composition, after all, as a tool to accomplish
the kind of atonal relationships they had already been working on for several
years. (Personally, while I can appreciated the highly integrated middle- and
large-scale structures of the serial music, I can't help but feel like the
pre-serial atonal music was more successful--perhaps exactly because the composers
were more focused on groupings, relationships, motives, etc which were smaller
and probably more within the range of what people are likely to be able to hear
and keep track of.)
>I am reminded of a class of Robert Morris' in which he was discussing Joseph
>Strauss' "Problem of Prolongation in Atonal Music" analysis of Webern's Op.
>24. Strauss finds 3-3 sets projected in time, but never mentions that the row
>is derrived from the set 3-3. Morris' comment was basically "big deal, 3-3 is
>all over the piece." Morris seemed to me to be missing Strauss' point that
>these 3-3's were special because they were not taken from contiguous sections
>of the same row, but by not acknowledging that the row was built around
>3-3, he left himself open to comments such as Morris'.
It's not clear to me why Straus's comments would be any more insulated from
this (rather banal) criticism if he engaged their derivation from the row
form. It would, clearly, say more about how Webern went about composing the
piece. Whether it would say any more about how one might hear the piece, is,
of course, a whole 'nother question.
>Catherine Nolan, on
>the other hand, looks for projected sets in Webern's serial music, but frames
>her comments in relation to the row, noting that a set she finds projected is
>characteristic of the row, or noting that a particular set she finds is
>interesting because it never occurs in a contiguous statement of the row.
I just flipped through some journals on the shelf and didn't find anything
by her--can you give any citations? Thanks.
This whole matter of composed vs heard structure is a very slippery slope--but
one that I feel analysis must ultimately deal with in order to have credibility.
The assumption that anything that's objectively "there" can be heard is part
of what has turned lots of folks off to "mainstream atonal analysis." However,
many analysts, in reaction to this, have gone off half-cocked with ad hoc
proclimations about what can or can't be heard with no less incredible results.
Who can say, after all, what they themselves hear, let alone what *any* other
listener might? We can, however, say with some confidence that some relationships
might be harder to hear i.e. more subtle, or even arcane) than others.
If I can be forgiven me the indulgance of quoting myself on the matter...
The analysis at hand is of the Carter song cycle *A Mirror on Which to Dwell.*
This is from the "preamble"--and is, of course, in academic theory-speak.
The logical starting point of any analytical endeavor is our perception
of the piece--an analysis must seek first and foremost to find ways (N.B.
plural) of hearing the piece in question and to communicate those ways.
The "listenerly" approach to analysis has gained much attention recently
in the music theory literature, largely in reaction to what some considered
the excesses of empiricist (score-oriented), theory-building anaylsis within
that literature, and, therefore, many analyses which espouse that approach
have tended to shy away from the kind of micro-structural detail which one
discovers through careful score study. This alludes to the major dilemma
of "listenerly" analysis: who is the listener, and how do we know what the
listener does or doesn't hear? A truly "listenerly" analysis, in which the
analyst takes her own hearing of the piece as the thing to be analyzed, may
approach sollipsism, and therefore may be informative to any other person's
understanding of the piece in only a limited way.
The approach of this analysis to this issue of intersubjectivity will be
based on the conclusion of [an earlier paper being cited]: in order to avoid
the solipsic tendencies of the "listenerly" approach," the analyst must also
consider the piece from the "composerly" and score-oriented approaches,
comparing the data as viewed from those approaches with her own perception,
and must analyze the piece not only on what she hears, but on what might
plausibly be heard. Furthermore, score study and "composerly" analysis are
vital in helping the analyst to understand and communicate *why* the piece
might be heard in a certain way or ways.
Specifically, in *A Mirror on Which to Dwell,* our perception of the
heterogeneous strands which make up the structures of the songs will often
be based on what we might call rather obvious perceptual cues: homogeneities
(within what we identify as a strand) in timbre, tessitura, event rate, etc.
But often the interaction of those strands, which determines our "reading"
of the structure, is based on more subtle relationships between the
individual strands--relationships which might not be apparent to an
analytical approach which eschews micro-structural detail, and views
perception in terms of an absolute "hearable/not hearable" dichotomy,
rather than a relative "...obvious...subtle...arcane..." continuum, in
which we do not attempt to establish the threshold of hearability, but
rather place perceptual phenomena appropriately along the contimuum of
hearability.
Matthew H. Fields
more familiar example: classical tonal sonata form. Do listeners
really hear the structural dissonance of the second key area after a
perfect authentic cadence and closed period in it? I know _I_ do, but
many listeners don't---they forget. In compensation for this,
sometimes composers repeat the exposition, abruptly juxatposing the
second key area with the first to remind the listener---ah, but
remember we started out over here, not up there!
Is the usual account of sonata form (in terms of a hierarchy of keys
analogous to a smaller hierarchy of cadence formulas for a hierarchy
of chords in a single, prolonged perfect authentic cadence) valid as a
listening strategy?
For the naive listener who has never heard classical music before,
it's a bit heady. For the listener who has heard a lot but never
studied this explanation, it may be heady and foreign, or it may put
into words things which that listener has already come to feel,
expect, and suspect. For both of those listeners, it supplies a
heuristic that says, indeed, that composers have thought in terms of
those conventions, and intend for them to be heard. A more-or-less
naive listener, given a few examples of the form and some of the
concepts, can often follow other examples well. When I've taught
things like this to music appreciation classes, comments came back
like "I can remember things in the perspective of a whole movement,
now, because I've glimpsed the conventions...but even with such
constraining conventions, its amazing how different all the pieces
are..." etc. that really showed me that these ideas _could_ have
meaning even for non-musicians. (Incidentally, another side-effect of
classes like this is to boost applications for beginner piano
lessons...)
The compositional lesson in all of this, I guess, has to do with
the relationship between the composer's world and the listener's world.
I don't see orange-purple clumps in Messaien's Quartet, though I know
he says they're there. But I do hear the consequences of "modes
of limited transpositions" (symmetrical divisions of the chromatic),
the way he used them. And I think I understand why he bothered
talking about dark bass notes, bright high notes, and orange-purple
octatonics...
Greg Dorter
>>Catherine Nolan,
>I just flipped through some journals on the shelf and didn't find anything
>by her--can you give any citations? Thanks.
Something coming out soon in JMT. There's her dissertation, which Lewin cites in his
re-analysis of Op. 27 in a recent Music Analysis. I've heard her read a paper, but it is
unpublished
K C Moore
ro...@silvertone.Princeton.EDU "Roger Lustig" writes:
> In article <825939...@hpsl.demon.co.uk> k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk writes:
> >What I would like to find is a justification, by any member of the 2nd
> >Viennese school, of the restriction of the number of pc sets to 12.
>
> Hello? Since when are PC sets restricted to 12? There are 12 sets
> of cardinality 3 alone...
Sorry, for the mistake; you guessed right below.
> As for why there are 12 pitch classes, well, I suspect it had something
> to do with the relationship between their music and the musical
> traditions they were working with and reacting to; and with the
> possibility of getting their music performed. After all, most
> of the good performers in their time preferred to play on instruments
> that used the usual 12 pitch classes.
Does that mean that you think that most good performers were pianists
or tuned percussion players? There have always been good performers on
instruments (eg most orchestral ones) which are not so limited. Even on
viols, one can bend the note with finger pressure and most notes are
available on two strings. I once asked a viol player how she coped with
the need for 2 'A's in justly tuned C major. She said she used an open
string for one and fingered the other, adjusting the fret appropriately.
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
K C Moore
cwe...@iastate.edu "Craig Weston" writes:
> [ ... ]
> This whole matter of composed vs heard structure is a very slippery slope--but
> one that I feel analysis must ultimately deal with in order to have credibility.
> The assumption that anything that's objectively "there" can be heard is part
> of what has turned lots of folks off to "mainstream atonal analysis." However,
> many analysts, in reaction to this, have gone off half-cocked with ad hoc
> proclimations about what can or can't be heard with no less incredible results.
> Who can say, after all, what they themselves hear, let alone what *any* other
> listener might?
The people who ought to be trying to find out are the experimental
perceptual psychologists. Indeed, they may be doing so, but the world
of musical composition appears not to be very aware of such work.
> If I can be forgiven me the indulgance of quoting myself on the matter...
> The analysis at hand is of the Carter song cycle *A Mirror on Which to Dwell.*
> This is from the "preamble"--and is, of course, in academic theory-speak.
>
> >The logical starting point of any analytical endeavor is our perception
> >of the piece--an analysis must seek first and foremost to find ways (N.B.
> >plural) of hearing the piece in question and to communicate those ways.
> >The "listenerly" approach to analysis has gained much attention recently
> >in the music theory literature, largely in reaction to what some considered
> >the excesses of empiricist (score-oriented), theory-building anaylsis
> >within
> >that literature, and, therefore, many analyses which espouse that approach
> >have tended to shy away from the kind of micro-structural detail which one
> >discovers through careful score study. This alludes to the major dilemma
> >of "listenerly" analysis: who is the listener, and how do we know what the
> >listener does or doesn't hear? A truly "listenerly" analysis, in which the
> >analyst takes her own hearing of the piece as the thing to be analyzed, may
> >approach sollipsism, and therefore may be informative to any other person's
> >understanding of the piece in only a limited way.
Experimenters deal with this question by well established techniques
including statistics and classification of subjects by musical experience.
> [ ... ]
> > But often the interaction of those strands, which determines our "reading"
> > of the structure, is based on more subtle relationships between the
> > individual strands--relationships which might not be apparent to an
> > analytical approach which eschews micro-structural detail, and views
> > perception in terms of an absolute "hearable/not hearable" dichotomy,
> > rather than a relative "...obvious...subtle...arcane..." continuum, in
> > which we do not attempt to establish the threshold of hearability, but
> > rather place perceptual phenomena appropriately along the contimuum of
> > hearability.
Once again, the perceptual psychologists have experimental techniques
which may be powerful enough to cope, even though this aspect of the
problem is one of the most complex. It seems to me that, as composers,
we should be interested not only in structural features which the
listeners notice consciously, but also those which influence their
attitude to the work without them being aware of them. Many years ago
I heard a radio talk by the late Hans Keller in which he said that
Mozart wrote to his father explaining how one could use small motifs
("threads") in several movements of one work so that the audience was
unconsciously influenced to feel the relationship. I have not managed
to find the relevant passage in Mozart's collected letters. Can anyone
confirm this story?
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Matthew H. Fields
Noam Elkies <elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu> wrote:
>In article <4hl0or$m...@news.eecs.umich.edu>
>fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) writes:
>>Hmmm, well, historically, repeated expositions come from dance forms
>>where you did everything starting first on the right foot, then on the left.
>Are you kidding? Dance forms, certainly, but not to achieve bilateral
>symmetry. Trying to dance to the repeat with right and left reversed
>will only confuse your partner.
Hmmm, Minuet--partner? Galliard---partner? Allemand---partner?
>(Does this mean that the second parts of the minuet from Haydn's
>Symphony #45 are to be danced backwards?...)
Hmmm, depends on the social conventions reigning at the time.
And whose party you attended.
Mark Rimple
: >Hmmm, well, historically, repeated expositions come from dance forms
: >where you did everything starting first on the right foot, then on the left.
Is this statement a confused attempt to refer to the notion that rounded
binary movement in the clavecinists and also Scarlatti, which began as
dance movements, are credited in doing many of the same harmonic and
thematic things that were later codified into the Sonata-allegro
process? The early dance pieces which became Baroque suite movements
don't necessarily modulate to the dominant. Look at Basse-Dance
movements in Attaignant Lute Tablatures... It's probably a mixed bag, so
there could be an argument in defense of the "dance gestural" evolution,
but it is as much of a stretch as saying that T.S. Eliot's Wasteland is
about anorexia and mysogeny (NY Times, today, book review).
--
Yours,
Mark Rimple
mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu
Deryk Barker
: Noam Elkies <elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu> wrote:
: >In article <4hl0or$m...@news.eecs.umich.edu>
: >fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) writes:
: >>Hmmm, well, historically, repeated expositions come from dance forms
: >>where you did everything starting first on the right foot, then on the left.
: >Are you kidding? Dance forms, certainly, but not to achieve bilateral
: >symmetry. Trying to dance to the repeat with right and left reversed
: >will only confuse your partner.
: Hmmm, Minuet--partner? Galliard---partner? Allemand---partner?
: >(Does this mean that the second parts of the minuet from Haydn's
: >Symphony #45 are to be danced backwards?...)
: Hmmm, depends on the social conventions reigning at the time.
: And whose party you attended.
Could explain the palindromic nature of the minuet from #47.....
--
Deryk.
===========================================================================
|Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Across the pale parabola of Joy |
|Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada | |
|email: dba...@camosun.bc.ca | Ralston McTodd |
|phone: +1 604 370 4452 | (Songs of Squalor). |
===========================================================================
Jean-Jacques Balet
Noam Elkies
mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu (Mark Rimple) writes:
>Noam Elkies (elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu) wrote:
>: >Hmmm, well, historically, repeated expositions come from dance forms
>: >where you did everything starting first on the right foot, then on the left.
Watch those attributions; I didn't write this. That was Matthew Fields.
My part in this thread was to question whether binary dance forms were
really danced on the opposite foot the second time through.
>Is this statement a confused attempt to refer to the notion that rounded
>binary movement in the clavecinists and also Scarlatti, which began as
>dance movements, are credited in doing many of the same harmonic and
>thematic things that were later codified into the Sonata-allegro process?
Probably, but we should let Matt speak for himself.
>The early dance pieces which became Baroque suite movements
>don't necessarily modulate to the dominant.
Nor do all sonata-allegro movements, especially those in minor keys;
nor all minuets and scherzi occurring in the same pieces. But that
in itself does not rule out an evolutionary process in which first
the binary form was established, then the tonal scheme.
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@math.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Greg Dorter
In an earlier post, I mentioned Catherine Nolan's work on Webern, but had no
citation to offer. The latest Journal of Music Theory (39, 1, Spring 1995) has an
article by her in which "like the [Op. 27] analyses by Westergaard and Travis [she]
seeks to demonstrate pitch connections that do not depend on the work's serial
organization."