Terms Flashcards
Synemmenon
The fifth type of tetrachord for Aristoxenus
Stretto
In FUGUE, the procedure of beginning a second statement of the subject before the preceding statement has finished
Ars Nova
14th century polyphony (opposite of 13th century polyphony = ars antiqua). Based on new notational techniques in Vitry’s “Ars Nova” (c. 1322)
Ausführung
Realization (the score itself) and Composing out (cf. Schenker). Also the second stage in Koch and Sulzer’s compositional plan Anlage-Ausfuhrung-Ausarbeitung
Fauxbourdon
Similar to organum, but favors imperfect intervals as opposed to perfect ones (parallel 6/3 chords). British origins, but developed by the French in the 15th century
Organum
A type of medieval polyphony (the earliest type, precursor to counterpoint in general). From the 12th century [on] it was used specifically to refer to music with a sustained-note tenor (usually a pre-existing part) and more mobile upper part or parts.
The Law of Prägnanz
Wertheimer and the Gestalt school. We perceive the best and simplest organization afforded by the circumstances
Metalepsis (transumption)
A figure of speech in which a word or a phrase from figurative speech is used in a new context. The “troping of a trope” (Bloom).
Noema
- A rhetorical figure to do with texture
- A homophonic passage within a contrapuntal piece (rhetorical definition)
- In phenomenology (Husserl), “a thing as we actually encounter it in lived experience”, “the things themselves”
Mehrdeutigkeit
Multiple meaning
Vogler: Modulation may exploit the “multiple meaning” of chords in two ways (pivot chord and enharmonic modulation)
Weber: the cognitive processes an “ideal listener” faces when closely attending to a (new) progression
expressive genre
- Robert Hatten, “Musical Meaning in Beethoven” (1994)
- Genres that imply changes of state, narrative, drama, topoi,
- e.g. Pastoral, Romance
Daseian notation
The type of musical notation used in the ninth century anonymous musical treatises Musica enchiriadis and Scolica enchiriadis (the first examples of written polyphony)
Mese
The equivalent of the note “a”, the middle point of the Boethian double octave
Zwischendominante
Secondary dominants, applied dominants
sedes troporum
- Contractus’s doctrine to do with modal species
- extension of Guido’s modi vocum
- taking the graves, finales, superiores, excellentes tetrachords and adding notes on either side to span a sixth
Diapente
medieval name for the perfect fifth
Pythagorean comma (a.k.a. Ditonic comma)
- 23.46 cents, slightly bigger than syntonic comma
- the difference between twelve 5ths and seven octaves.
- the total amount of temperament on a modern piano sums to this (each P5 is tempered by 1/12 of a P. comma)
Syntonic comma
- The difference between 81:64 (Pythagorean major third) and 80:64 (just-tuned major third)
- It’s about 1/9th of a whole tone (a whole tone = 9:8)
- the difference between a just major 3rd and four just perfect 5ths less two octaves,
- 21.51 cents
Extra-motival rows
- What Babbitt calls “contextual”
- Term developed by Ernst Krenek and Richard Hill
- rows that are not just motives on the surface, but actually structural at a deep level
Partimento
“preluding”, improvising and expanding on unfigured bass lines
Übergreifen
Reaching over (cf. Schenker)
double-tonic complex
term employed by Robert Bailey (1977) in the context of Wagnerian analysis
Ars musica
The “harmonics tradition”: ancient Greek theory
Prima pratica VS Seconda pratica
- Monteverdi’s battle with Artusi in the very early 17th century (beginnings of the baroque period)
- Prima pratica refers to the old style of Palestrina, where dissonances are properly prepared and resolved
- Seconda pratica refers to the new style, the freer, rhetorically expressive style of the northern Italian concertato
floating tonality
“Floating (schwebend) tonality was Arnold Schoenberg’s term to describe music that oscillated between two or more keys regardless of whether they were major or minor.” He used it for Wagner
tonal fusion (Tonverschmelzung)
Stumpf: consonance is the result of “tonal fusion”: two tones blending until they are perceived as “unitary”. Dissonance is the lack of tonal fusion.
hexachordal mutation
Shifting between the “natural”, “hard”, and “soft” hexachords of Guido
Z-relations
- Pitch-class sets that have the same interval vector but not the same prime form.
- They are not able to be transformed into one another by Transposition or Inversion
- They always occur in pairs, at least for the equal temperament system
- Also known as “isomeric relations”
Modal affinity
- Hucbald of St Amand hinted at it
- Guido described it
- The relationship between medieval modes that have the same pitches but in different order, i.e. the relationship between authentic and plagal modes that have the same final
Phonicity
Oettingen: “the property of the pitches that constitute an interval or chord to possess common partials. The lowest of all such partials is called the phonic overtone.”
Musica ficta
- In medieval and renaissance music, the introduction of sharps, flats, accidentals to avoid unacceptable intervals
- The introduction of notes not in the Guidonian gamut
- To do with the notes using Bb instead of B natural in the middle ages
All-interval tetrachord
- Two different ones: (0137) and (0146)
Expectancy theory
- Meyer, Narmour, Huron
- Implication-realization model of melodic expectation developed by Narmour
Protus, Deuterus, Tritus, and Tetrardus
- The names of the four modal types based on intervallic content and patterns for Regino (middle ages)
- the names of individual notes in the Daseian tetrachord (Enchiriadis treatises)
Beat class
- Also known as “time-point equivalence classes” (Babbitt)
- First articulated by Babbitt, later developed by Morris and Roeder
- Each position within a bar line is part of a beat-class
Transduction
turning sounds into something else, making meaning of the vibrations/sounds
saltus duriusculus
- Rhetorical figure by Bernhard
- large or dissonant leaps (usually descending)
- not used in stylus gravis
subsumptio
- rhetorical figure by Bernhard
- a lower escape tone
- used in Stylus Luxurians Communis
transitus inversus
- rhetorical figure by Bernhard
- in recitative, when a passing dissonance is on a strong beat and consonance is on weak beat
- used in Stylus Luxurians Theatralis
- an expanded version of Quasi-transitus (which is used in stylus gravis)
heterolepsis
- rhetorical figure by Bernhard
- leaping into another voice
Index Vector
Twelve digits that shows the number of common tones under TnI for each n (this is figured out from adding members of the set to other members of the set or to themselves)
ITPRA (Huron)
Imagination, Tension, Prediction, Reaction, Appraisal
stochastic process
creating random paths for sounds with computer algorithms, used in Xenakis’s ST/48 and ST/10 (1962)
cambiata
Fux: only second note dissonant: e.g. D-C-A-B-C over D-E
rotational form
varied multi-sectional strophes, cf. Darcy 2001
akzenttheorie
Kirnberger, Weber, Hauptmann. Accents defined internally and usually beginning-accented. Riemann criticized it
Prolation
the lowest level of mensuration: below major modus, minor modus, and tempus. It’s between the semibreve and minim
enharmonic seam
crossed when dividing the octave equally in pitch-class space but using western notation. See Cohn “As wonderful as star clusters: Instruments for gazing at tonality in Schubert” (1999)
pitch-class-set genera
- Forte (1988)
- 12 of them
- classifying sets of cardinality 4 and higher by trichordal subsets
Italian Sixth
Holden (1770)
Schema
- Gjerdingen “Music in the Galant Style” (2007)
- a prototype, exemplar, and theory
double tonic complex
Bailey (1977) re: wagner
Hyperbaton (Versetzung)
- rhetorical figure (Scheibe)
- transfer of a note or phrase from its natural position to a different position
dispositio
- The part of rhetoric that determines the linear ordering and arrangement of words
soggetti
Zarlino’s varying kinds of pre-existing lines to composer counterpoint against
Rhythmopoeia
- Based on Greek poetic meters
- iamb short–long;
- trochee for long–short;
- anapest for two shorts followed by a long;
- Printz and Mattheson
Parembole
- rhetorical figure by Burmeister in harmonic category
- two or more voices have a point of imitation, another voice is free
pitch-class multiplication
- Boulez
- Boulez used it, e.g. in Le Marteau sans Maître with a twelve-tone row being divided into 5
segments (2+4+2+1+3) - The multiplicand is a superset of the multipliers
- It is not commutative, but AB will be transpositionally related to BA (same set class)
- Take the intervallic properties of the first set, and apply them to each pitch-class of the second set
(this is much easier if the sets are all in normal form) - E.g. {Eb F F#} multiplied by {GA} = {G,A,Bb} + {ABC} = {G,A,Bb,B,C}
- It relates closely to Cohn’s “transpositional combination” (combining a set with one or more
transposition of itself to create a larger set).
Klumpenhouwer network
- for trichords: has one T relationship and two TnI’s
- Lewin: strong isography = exact same T’s and I’s
- positive isography = same T and constant difference between the I’s
- negative isography = complementary T and constant sum of I’s
Rule of the octave
How to harmonize a scale with figures bass. Campion 1716
