Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky

Berger, Arthur

doi:10.2307/832252

Cited by 85 publications

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“…By examining bitonality's operations from a position interior to the prevailing tonal systems (‘[b]itonality in this piece, when it appears as an obvious structural component, essentially results from a double projection of 5‐cycle and related sets’[Harrison 1997, p. 399]), Harrison also inclines towards a refutation of one of the other standard criticisms of polytonal theory. Arthur Berger's influential analysis of Stravinsky (1968) exposed the epochal Petrushka chord, previously interpreted as a ‘bitonal’ deployment of simultaneously articulated C and F♯ tritone‐related triads, as an octatonic complex. Insightful though his reading is, to my mind it exemplifies a systemic analytical flaw, whereby an exploration of a work's nuanced bitonal impulses is obfuscated by an appeal to a broader system of tonal governance 28 .…”

Section: Drive In Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A Science of Tonal Love’? Drive and Desire in Twentieth‐Century Harmony: the Erotics of Skryabin

Smith

2010

Music Analysis

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Leonid Sabaneyev attested that Skryabin's compositions contained within them ‘a science of tonal love’, and Skryabin himself described his two Op. 57 pieces –Désir and Caresse dansée– as ‘new ways of making love’. But what makes this music so erotic in nature? The composer theorised about the nature of desire and sexuality in his writings, but this discussion rarely spills over into analysis of his compositional system. Given that Skryabin was so steeped in psychology throughout his life, I appeal to the work of Freud and Jacques Lacan, and particularly to their distinction between drive and desire (essentially, the fundamental instinct of the id versus its imaginary representation), a distinction found in Skryabin's own philosophical writings. But the progression between these two states bears comparison with both his philosophy and his harmonic processes, and I thus focus on the function of the dominant chord, exploring ways in which it can replicate the structures of drive and desire. In so doing, I scrutinise several piano miniatures to show that part of Skryabin's method of embodying drive in music lays out ambiguous chord structures which bear simultaneous tendencies to move in a number of different directions, as multivalent as the drive in the human subject. Further, I attempt to show that, out of mystical sonorities, Skryabin temporally unfolds a dialogue of different dominant ‘drives’, and eventually selects and nurtures a single one at the expense of others, a motion equivalent to desire.

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Section: Drive In Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A Science of Tonal Love’? Drive and Desire in Twentieth‐Century Harmony: the Erotics of Skryabin

Smith

2010

Music Analysis

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“…Conversely, bitonality, as mentioned above, is 'the simultaneous use of two keys'. Consequently, because tonality by definition admits only one pitch centre, many theorists consider bi-or polytonalism a figment of the imagination, and explain so-called bi-or polytonal passages as a partitioning of the chromatic scale, or of certain pitch-class sets such as the octatonic scale or octad (Berger, 1978;Straus, 1990;van den Toorn, 1983). The octatonic collection is an eight-note scale in which whole steps and half steps, or half steps and whole steps, alternate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-musicians’ and musicians’ perception of bitonality

Hamamoto

Botelho

Munger

2010

Psychology of Music

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Bitonal music is characterized by a certain, dissonant effect that had been believed to be clearly audible by everyone. However, Wolpert found that non-musicians were unable to identify bitonal versions of originally monotonal musical passages as such in a free response task. The present study replicated Wolpert’s findings, but also had participants rate song clips for likeableness, correctness and pleasantness. Bitonal music was rated lower on all dimensions independent of the individual’s level of musical training, with no difference in ratings by non-musicians and musicians. In addition, following a brief training session, non-musicians (less than one year of musical training) identified whether clips were monotonal or bitonal at equivalently high rates as the intermediate (mean 2.4 years) and expert (mean 9.2 years) musician groups.

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“…(22) Analyses of other centric or neo-tonal works might do well to consider Copland's words seriously. Berger 1963. Antokoletz 1984 analyzes the music of Béla Bartók and suggests that movements display a single pitch center that often acts as a significant axis of inversion.…”

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confidence: 99%

A Tonal Revolution in Fifths and Semitones: Aaron Copland’sQuiet City

Heetderks

2011

MTO

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[1] A number of pieces written in the first half of the twentieth century sound tonal while also containing decidedly modern elements. The label "neo-tonal" or "centric" is often applied to such works, which include music by Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky during his neoclassical period, and others. Zimmerman (2002) and Silberman (2006) point out that readings of neo-tonal music often combine techniques of both tonal and post-tonal analysis, an approach that opens the question of precisely which elements of the tonal idiom are applicable to the work under discussion. (1) Such readings also raise a related question of whether a single mode of analysis can apply to an entire composition, or whether we must jettison the assumption of stylistic unity and find the best possible method for each individual section. (2) Aaron Copland's Quiet City (1940) raises similar questions for analysts. The work has a consonant musical surface yet often strips away many markers of common-practice tonality. This paper offers a hearing of Quiet City that is oriented toward two of its most salient features: ABSTRACT: Tonal ambiguity in Aaron Copland's Quiet City, a feature frequently noted by critics, results from a radical reorganization of the constituent elements of tonality. Many sections of the work eschew triads and, in lieu of tonal progressions and key centers, the work shifts between referential collections and emphasizes pitches through salience. This paper creates a perfect fifth/semitone Tonnetz to model two of Quiet City's most notable features: motives built from pentatonic subsets and semitonal shifts. The Tonnetz reveals isomorphisms between melodic motives and characteristic shifts between pitch-class collections, and it shows that climactic sections feature dramatic reversals of motion. Pattern completion-a voice-leading technique in which a missing note from a collection established as normative sounds conspicuously-articulates points of arrival and confirms central pitches. This analysis shows that Quiet City transforms the relations among the constituent elements of tonality in order to further explore the potential of the tonal system, an avowed aesthetic goal of Copland's.

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Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky

Cited by 85 publications

References 0 publications

‘A Science of Tonal Love’? Drive and Desire in Twentieth‐Century Harmony: the Erotics of Skryabin

‘A Science of Tonal Love’? Drive and Desire in Twentieth‐Century Harmony: the Erotics of Skryabin

Non-musicians’ and musicians’ perception of bitonality

A Tonal Revolution in Fifths and Semitones: Aaron Copland’sQuiet City

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