The Question of Purpose in Music Theory: Description, Suggestion, and Explanation

Is musical structure something in the mind of the listener, in which case its elucidation involves the description of (perhaps unconscious) psychological processes and representations? Or is it something that resides in the musical object itself perhaps, in large part, not normally part of the listener's hearing and experience, but revealed by the analyst with the aim of enhancing that experience? Temperley explores the purpose and definition of music theory

Phenomenon and Abstraction: Coordinating Concepts in Music Theory and Analysis

This dissertation explores the habits of thought that inform how music analysts conceptualize the music they study and how this conceptualization affects the kinds of claims they make and the discursive practices adopted to express them. I aim to clarify these issues in music-theoretical conceptualization with an eye toward mediating analytical disagreements by tracing the influence of two types of concepts used in contemporary music analysis. I differentiate what I call theoretical concepts, which refer to abstract, theoretical objects, from phenomenal concepts, which refer to elements of felt, musical experience. Drawing on theories of concepts from philosophy of mind, I argue that these concepts have a complex structure, featuring both a reference and mode of presentation. The musical concept Dominant, for instance, might be used as a phenomenal concept, referring to the conscious experience of hearing a dominant, or it might be used as a theoretical concept, referring to a kind of abstract object, presented as either the triad the leads to the tonic or the triad built on scale degree five. In analysis, the kinds of concepts that analysts use will determine the scope of their analyses as well as define what sorts of critiques are best deployed against them. I explore four different ways that these conceptual types are used. These case studies include conceptually simple theories that attempt to foreground one type of concept or another (from the formalized model proffered by Eugene Narmour, to the drawing-analyses of Elaine Barkin) as well as more common analytical strategies that rely on both kinds of concept in concert, such as Schenkerian analysis and transformational and neo-Riemannian theory. I enrich my study of analytical approaches with insights drawn from my own analytical practice, including a wide range of styles and composers (though foregrounding the complexity of tonal analysis especially) and close readings of various authors in different analytical traditions. In general, I am concerned less with testing the soundness of any given approach than with understanding what ways of conceptualizing music underlie them and how analysts coordinate these concepts in practice. I find that while most approaches rely on both types of concept in some combination, their differences come in the roles these concepts play in analytical methodology and the degree to which each type of engagement is foregrounded in practice

James M. Baker, David W. Beach, and Jonathan Bernard, eds. Music Theory in Concept and Practice. University of Rochester Press, 1997.529 pp

Nonken's article critiques the content and focus of the Music Theory in Concept and Practice. She claims that although the, intention is to reflect the preoccupations of the field today. In this task, it succeeds only in part, that is not fully the case. In fact, the editors have chosen not to focus on the following influences, acknowledged in the introduction: computer science, linguistics, mathematics, literary theory, gender studies, philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology

Music attending to linear constituent structures in tonal music

This article investigates the perception of constituent linear structures of tonal musical pieces, using a divided attention paradigm combined with a click-detection technique. Two experiments were run so as to test whether the boundary of a linear constituent appears as a focal point in the perception of musical structure. In Experiment 1, musicians and non- musicians listened to open foreground prolongations in phrases with clicks located at different points of their constituent structures. Significant differences in response times were found that depended on click position in relation to the boundary; participants were faster in detecting clicks at constituent boundaries, and slower for clicks located before boundaries, with no effect of rhythmic factors. Experiment 2 used the same experimental design to explore perception of open linear foreground prolongations, with the assumption that an effect of branching (left to right, or vice versa) could orient attention differently to the boundary region. Results were similar to those of Experiment 1. Overall, the evidence supports the idea that linear constituency is a significant feature of the perception of tonal musical structure. Dominant events become cognitive reference points to which the focus of attention is allocated, and subordinate, dependent events that are associated to the former, orient expectations of continuation and/or closure.Laboratorio para el Estudio de la Experiencia Musica

A standard format proposal for hierarchical analyses and representations

In the realm of digital musicology, standardizations efforts to date have mostly concentrated on the representation of music. Analyses of music are increasingly being generated or communicated by digital means. We demonstrate that the same arguments for the desirability of standardization in the representation of music apply also to the representation of analyses of music: proper preservation, sharing of data, and facilitation of digital processing. We concentrate here on analyses which can be described as hierarchical and show that this covers a broad range of existing analytical formats. We propose an extension of MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) to allow the encoding of analyses unambiguously associated with and aligned to a representation of the music analysed, making use of existing mechanisms within MEI's parent TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) for the representation of trees and graphs

Graph based representation of the music symbolic level. A music information retrieval application

In this work, a new music symbolic level representation system is described. It has been tested in two information retrieval tasks concerning similarity between segments of music and genre detection of a given segment. It could include both harmonic and contrapuntal informations. Moreover, a new large dataset consisting of more than 5000 leadsheets is presented, with meta informations taken from different web databases, including author information, year of first performance, lyrics, genre, etc.ope

Some Major Theoretical Problems Concerning the Concept of Hierarchy in the Analysis of Tonal Music

Level-analysis in the field of music theory today is rarely hierarchical, at least in the strict sense of the term. Most current musical theories view levels systemically. One problem with this approach is that it usually does not distinguish compositional structures from perceptual structures. Another is its failure to recognize that in an artifactual phenomenon the inherence of idiostructures is as crucial to the identity of an artwork as the inherence of style structures. But can the singularity of an idiostructure be captured in the generality of an analytical symbol? In music analysis, it would seem possible provided closure and nonclosure are admitted as simultaneous properties potentially present at all hierarchical levels. One complication of this assumption, however, is that both network and tree relationships result. Another is that such relationships span in both horizontal (temporal) and vertical (structural) directions. Still another complication is the emergence of transient levels. In this paper, a tentative solution to these problems is offered by invoking a hypothetical theory that relies on the cognitive concepts of return, reversal, and continuation (i.e., similarity) as regards the parameters of melody, harmony, and duration. Applied to the theme of Mozart\u27s Piano Sonata, K. 331, this analytical theory is contrasted with several systemic analyses of the same theme by the theorists DeVoto, Lester, Schenker, and Meyer. In conclusion, the hierarchical analysis of the Mozart theme gives way to a synthesis as the melody\u27s various levels are rendered into rankings of pitch shown on one level only

Auxiliary Cadences and the Binary Rondo

James Hepokoski’s and Warren Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory is fast emerging as one the most influential theories of form to have been advanced in recent decades. The authors only briefly discuss some of the Schenkerian implications of their work, but what they have to say is intriguing and opens up broad avenues of future research. This essay contributes to that research program. It focuses on the Schenkerian notion of the auxiliary cadence and how it manifests itself in a formal design that up until recently has not been well understood, namely the category of rondo that Hepokoski and Darcy have termed the Type 41 sonata. To that end, I analyze the role that the auxiliary cadence plays in a group of four closely-related Type 41 rondos: the finales of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto, Op. 58; his String Quartet Op. 59/2; Brahms’s Piano Concerto, Op. 83; and his String Quintet, Op. 111. I also touch briefly on the finale to Schubert’s late Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960. It is possible—although it cannot be proven—that the Beethoven finales provided a model for Schubert’s and Brahms’s. This article is part of a special, serialized feature: A Music-Theoretical Matrix: Essays in Honor of Allen Forte (Part V)