Motivic Trees, Network Analysis, and Bartók’s Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs, No. 5

Abstract

Abstract This article describes a method for using graph-theoretical trees to model relations between musical motives, turning primarily to Dora Hanninen’s notion of associative lineages, as well as to certain approaches from the field of phylogenetics. Since the fifth of Béla Bartók’s Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs (1920) presents a piece-spanning process that, while unidirectional, is also continuously branching, it forms the sole musical example. In addition, the article also examines philosophical dimensions by situating these analytical considerations within Deleuze and Guattari’s tree/rhizome distinction and the more general opposition between the discrete and the continuous.