Unit 5, Set-class Theory

Question 1

Music governed by a set of rules that consists of an arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions, and directionality. This musical language was primary in the Western classical music traditional from roughly the time of Bach to roughly the time of Brahms.

Answer 1

Tonal music

Question 2

The term used to define the larger umbrella of music that exists outside of (often perceived as after) the tonal system of the common practice period. This music may have some governing principles, some that are even held over from tonality, but it generally lacks key and harmonic function in the traditional sense.

Answer 2

Post-tonal music

Question 3

The term used more specifically to refer to music that lacks the tonal guiding principles and ambiguously brings to an equal playing field what is otherwise referred to as consonant or dissonant.

Answer 3

Atonal music

Question 4

The musical focus on a specific pitch classes or triads, whether in tonal or post-tonal contexts.

Answer 4

Centricity

Question 5

A specific note within a specific octave.

Answer 5

Pitch

Question 6

All notes by a particular note name or interger, including all octave equivalents or enharmonic equivalents.

Answer 6

Pitch class

Question 7

The system of numbers used to generalize pitch classes.

Answer 7

Integer notation

Question 8

The wrap around point in a counting system. This would be 0 (zero) on a 12-tone clock face representation.

Answer 8

Modulus

Question 9

The representation of the twelve pitch classes so that the numbers continuously wrap around (as on a clock face). This would be opposed to a representation of pitches on a timeline.

Answer 9

Modulo-12 (mod-12)

Question 10

The absolute value in semitones between two given pitches.

Answer 10

Unordered pitch interval

Question 11

The distance between two pitches that also includes a plus or minus indicating direction.

Answer 11

Ordered pitch interval

Question 12

The distance between two given pitch classes concerned with the direction of travel. Distance is counted in a clock-wise fashion on the clock face from the starting pitch class to the ending pitch class.

Answer 12

Ordered pitch-class interval

Question 13

The distance between two given pitch classes without concern for a direction of travel. It is simply the shortest available route between two pitch classes.

Answer 13

Unordered pitch-class interval

Question 14

Another name for unordered pitch-class intervals, that generalizes many different pitch intervals, including compound intervals.

Answer 14

Interval class

Question 15

The representation of the interval class content of a set into a standardized scoreboard-style string of numbers, indicated occurrences of each of the six interval classes.

Answer 15

Interval class vector

Question 16

An unordered collection of pitch classes.

Answer 16

Pitch-class set

Question 17

The most compressed way of writing a given pitch-class set (and left-compacted), which makes it easy to see the essential attributes of a set and compare it to other sets. This format will include the pitch-classes as expressed in a given instance. This standardized way of writing a collection of pitches uses square brackets, spaces, and commas to separate pitch classes.

Answer 17

Normal form

Question 18

The process of moving a line of pitches by a certain interval, maintaining order of pitches and the intervallic relationship between each pitch.

Answer 18

Transposition

Question 19

The process of flipping pitch relationships such that contour is reversed.

Answer 19

Inversion

Question 20

The sum of n-semitones of transposition following a inversion (TnI) process.

Answer 20

Index number

Question 21

The generalized collection of pitch classes represents all other transpositional or inversional equivalents within a family of pitch-class sets.

Answer 21

Set class

Question 22

The most normal of all possible normal form spellings of a family of pitch-class sets, starting with 0 (zero), is the most compressed, and most left-compacted format. This standardized way of writing a collection of pitches uses parentheses, but not spaces or commas.

Answer 22

Prime form

Question 23

The way which the music is divided into groupings of pitches for analysis.

Answer 23

Segmentation

Question 24

A nested collection of pitch classes within a larger collection of pitch classes.

Answer 24

Subset

Question 25

A larger collection of pitch classes that may contain smaller collections of pitch classes within it.

Answer 25

Superset