Music Theory Online最新文献

{"title":"Experiencing Chen Yi’s Music: Local and Cosmopolitan Reciprocities in Ning for Pipa, Violin and Cello (2002)","authors":"Marianne Kielian-Gilbert","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.13","url":null,"abstract":"Chen Yi’s music, particularly her Ning for Pipa, Violin and Cello (2002), constructs reciprocities in compositional and aesthetic practice, and in the social-relational dynamics of musical contrast, performative and commemorative impulses. One aim of my paper is to suggest how Chen’s music offers multiple affiliations for music listeners, such that the local emerges in the cosmopolitan and vice versa. Events and textures emerge from, and become emblematic in emotional (affective) characters, in multiple orientations and receptions. Chen counterpoints and integrates the durational pa erning suggestive of irregular Chinese “Ba Ban” tunes and more regular melodic models extending from popular song (e.g., the “Mo Li Hua” tune in Ning). Moving between, displacing and traversing—these emerging associations, narratives, encounters and migrations, entangle listening experiences of self and community, borderland and nation, and trauma and place. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory [1.1] In experiencing the music of Chinese-born American composer Chen Yi, my a ention was gradually drawn to the depth of her contact with Chinese folk materials and their play of durational pa erning. From these angles one enters a sonic world of multiple affiliations and reciprocities between musical ideas both cosmopolitan and local, processive and articulated. [1.2] Moving between, displacing and traversing—Chen Yi’s music, its dispositions, narratives, encounters and migrations, entangle listening experiences of self and community, borderland and nation, exile and place. In this article, I offer an experiential study of Chen’s 2002 mixed trio Ning for Pipa, Violin and Cello. I consider how this music shapes and challenges aesthetic distance, memory, and future promise, describe aspects of it through a variety of music-experiential lenses, and offer observations on processes of sensing and negotiating these differences in changing dynamics of affiliation, both cosmopolitan and local. Part I. Challenging contradictions and aesthetic distance [E]ach experience that we composers come across can become the source and exciting medium of our creation. That’s why I don’t have a fixed scope, a frame of styles to expect to hear when someone says “American music.” (Chen 1999) Questions of priority in research cannot be answered outside the purview of ideology, however—what we believe the enterprise to be about, what we get out of it as practicing analysts or theorists, and how what we do facilitates or impedes intellectual (or other forms of) domination. (Agawu 2006, 42) [1.3] Why are constructing or denying categorizations of difference and identity so fraught in our contemporary landscape? How can one escape claims of fla ening and homogenizing difference— for example, “rootless internationalism”—on one hand, and isolationist or elitist restrictiveness, on the other?(1) “Border thinking” crosses between and within to unse le “silo” mentalit","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45554708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Interactions of Folk Melody and Transformational (Dis)continuities in Chen Yi’s Ba Ban (1999)","authors":"J. Roeder","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.12","url":null,"abstract":"Chen Yi’s Ba Ban (1999) for solo piano, like many works of Western-trained Chinese composers, situates fragments of evocative traditional folk melody within a post-tonal discourse that is well described by transformation theory. The eponymous folk tune that it quotes is a standard of the sizhu (“silk-and-bamboo”) repertoire. In sizhu performance practice, the evenly pulsed rhythm of the 68-beat melody is augmented and each pitch is highly “flowered,” that is, decorated. Chen’s piece, often simulating the timbral quality of sizhu heterophony, reproduces some of the directed temporal qualities of this repertoire by quoting distinctive phrases and elaborating their pitches. Intermingled with this discourse, however, it presents multilinear threads of motivic transformation through virtuoso figurations typical of Western piano repertoire. The free rhythm evokes a different folk music tradition, mountain song, that Chen mentions as inspiration. At first, as the post-tonal structures are introduced, they disrupt the linear continuity of the Ba Ban folk tune and create an undirected associative network. Eventually, however, they gain control over temporality as firmly as Ba Ban did at first, and then Ba Ban itself is transformed into ametrical pulse. Considering the contrasting gendered connotations of mountain song and sizhu, I suggest how my narrative of these rhythmic processes might resonate with some ideas of feminist theory. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45851300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“All of the Rules of Jazz”","authors":"Brian A. Miller","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.6","url":null,"abstract":"Though improvising computer systems are hardly new, jazz has recently become the focus of a number of novel computer music projects aimed at convincingly improvising alongside humans, with a particular focus on the use of machine learning to imitate human styles. The a empt to implement a sort of Turing test for jazz, and interest from organizations like DARPA in the results, raises important questions about the nature of improvisation and musical style, but also about the ways jazz comes popularly to stand for such broad concepts as “conversation” or “democracy.” This essay explores these questions by considering robots that play straight-ahead neoclassical jazz alongside George Lewis’s free-improvising Voyager system, reading the technical details of such projects in terms of the ways they theorize the recognition and production of style, but also in terms of the political implications of human-computer musicking in an age of algorithmic surveillance and big data. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory [0.1] In 2016, the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College began hosting the “Turing Tests in Creative Arts,” a set of yearly competitions in music and literature intended to “determine whether people can distinguish between human and algorithmic creativity.”(1) The musical categories for the most recent contest in 2018 include “Musical Style or Free Composition” and “Improvisation with a Human Performer.” In the former, computational systems have to generate music in the style of Charlie Parker given a lead sheet, Bach’s chorales given a soprano line, electroacoustic music given some source sound, or “free composition,” apparently also in a given style. The improvisation challenge tests a system’s musicality and interactivity with a human collaborator in either jazz or free composition. And while few can claim to have won prizes for passing it, the Turing test is often invoked by researchers developing algorithmic musical systems. (2) The Flow Machines project at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories, led by François Pachet until his recent departure for Spotify, touts its Continuator (which uses a variable-order Markov model to improvise in the style of a human pianist by way of a call-and-response exchange) as having passed the Turing test, and press coverage often invokes the term when discussing a more recent project from the same team aimed at generating pop songs (Jordan 2017). Similarly, computer scientist Donya Quick’s “Kuli a” system has garnered headlines like, “If There Was a Turing Test for Music Artificial Intelligence, ‘Kuli a’ Might Pass It” (Synthtopia 2015); other recent online articles have asked, “Can We Make a Musical Turing Test?” (Hornigold 2018) and answered, “A New AI Can Write Music as Well as a Human Composer” (Kaleagasi 2017). [0.2] Many of these articles appear on sites with names like “SingularityHub” and “Futurism”; often, the Turing test is less a meas","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46311549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Harmonizing Chorales Systematically: A Translation of G. H. Stölzel’s Kurzer und gründlicher Unterricht (Brief and Thorough Instruction), ms. c.1719–1749","authors":"Derek Remeš","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.7","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides the first English translation of a li le-known manuscript treatise by the central-German composer and Capellmeister, Go fried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749), titled Kürzer und gründliche Unterricht (Brief and Thorough Instruction, ca. 1719–49). Stölzel’s method frames speculative theory (trias harmonica and the tabula tradition) practically in terms of thoroughbass in order to provide simple instruction on how to invent the bass and middle voices to an original chorale melody. In the second half of the treatise, Stölzel uses thoroughbass to describe not only harmony, but also counterpoint. He does so by explaining various dissonant intervallic constellations in terms of the traditional terms “agent” and “patient,” which describe the two voices involved in a dissonant syncopatio. Stölzel’s treatise thus has both historical and practical value, since his method of chorale harmonization can provide welcome guidance for today's students and pedagogues. DOI: 10.30535/mto.26.3.7 Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49424144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Cultural Significance of Timbre Analysis","authors":"Megan L. Lavengood","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.3","url":null,"abstract":"This article is in three interrelated parts. In Part 1, I present a methodology for analyzing timbre that combines spectrogram analysis and cultural analysis. I define a number of acoustic timbral a ributes to which one may a une when analyzing timbre, organized as oppositional pairs of marked and unmarked terms, in order to both aid in spectrogram analysis and account for some of this cultural and perceptual work. In Part 2, building from Allan Moore’s definition of four functional layers in pop texture, I argue for the adoption of a fifth layer, which I term the novelty layer. I study its construction in 1980s hit singles via the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. The novelty layer is imbued with several layers of semiotic significance: it functions in opposition to the melodic layer, comprises instruments whose timbral characteristics are more resistant to blending with the rest of the ensemble, and often uses “world instruments” in 1980s popular music. This la er point is a reflection of the problematic treatment of world music by 1980s music culture. I use my approach to timbre analysis to define the timbral norms for the novelty layer as opposed to Moore’s other layers. In Part 3, I create a dialogic narrative analysis of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid (1984) that demonstrates what it might mean to transgress these norms. This analysis, in acknowledging the problematic cultural associations of the song, illustrates the rich discourse that can be produced when timbre is made central to the analytical process. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory [0.1] Example 1 is a transcription of the prechorus and chorus of “What’s Love Got to Do with It” by Tina Turner, which reached #1 in the US in September 1984 and #3 in the UK in June 1984. To describe the texture of “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” the instruments can be understood using Allan Moore’s (2012) concept of four functional layers present in pop textures: the explicit beat layer, the functional bass layer, the melodic layer, and the harmonic filler layer. Tina Turner’s voice is the melody layer, which carries the main melody and lyrics.(1) The explicit beat layer and functional bass layer are found, as expected, in the drum set, which plays a basic rock beat, and in the bass line, which plays chord roots in slow, predictable rhythms before switching to a more linear bass in the reggae-tinged chorus, respectively. These two functional layers, according to Moore, work together to provide the “groove” of a pop song. The harmonic filler layer, which Moore defines as the layer whose function is “to fill the ‘registral’ space between [the functional bass and melody] layers,” is made up of the guitar, which plays strictly chordal accompanimental figures; one DX7 preset, . 1, which, like the guitar, plays chordal accompaniment; and the strings, which thicken this core texture. [0.2] Having exhausted Moore’s four functional layers, I have left one instrume","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44032426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Continuous Question-Answer Pairs","authors":"Y. Goldenberg","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.2","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a generalized study of continuous question-answer pairs in commonpractice tonal music. In all (and only in) question-answer pairs, the first ending is less conclusive than the second. The first ending need not, however, be a cadence. The category of question-answer pairs (QAPs) that are continuous cuts across various theme types in Caplin’s (1998) taxonomy. Examples of continuous QAPs include (1) continuous periods (with a dominant-version consequent or a consequent with a non-tonic beginning); (2) most, but not all cases of the hybrid theme type compound basic theme + consequent; and (3) many, but not all statement-response pairs in sentential presentations. Various aspects contribute to the evaluation of each specific case, including caesuras, motivic parallelism, symmetry, internal organization, unit length, independence of the hyper-unit, and melodic closure. DOI: 10.30535/mto.26.3.2 Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43463344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resolving Tensions between Outer Form and Inner Form in Fugue: A Comparative Analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor (WTC I)","authors":"S. Marlowe","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.5","url":null,"abstract":"This study offers a comparative analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor, from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I (WTC I). Detailed examination of multiple divergent readings of the same musical excerpts raises important questions about Schenkerian theory and its application to fugal textures. I suggest that analytical discrepancies arise primarily when voice-leading concerns are not completely disentangled from our deeply rooted views of formal design in fugue. In the end, an over-reliance on the details of outer form risks blocking access to the fugue’s inner form. I identify and resolve significant differences that emerge at the foreground in these readings, later considering how a combined view of formal design (outer form) and tonal structure (inner form) resolves ambiguities and enhances our understanding of the work as a whole. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory [1] For the past several decades, Schenkerian theorists have examined the interaction between formal design and tonal structure extensively, focusing primarily on repertoire from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.(1) With few exceptions, the fugal genre is notably absent from this discussion.(2) Reasons for this absence are surely varied, but one notable cause is that fugal textures intensify issues of voice-leading at the foreground level. Baroque fugues in particular— with their dense textures and lack of predictable phrase groupings—prevent theorists from making any sort of prediction about the tonal structure (Gauldin 2013, 223; C. Smith 1996, 272; Renwick 1995a, 205), and place considerable demands on the analyst (Renwick 1995a, 205; Schachter [1973] 1999). These complications, although not insurmountable, are perhaps one reason why the fugal genre has received less a ention than later tonal styles in the Schenkerian literature. As my study will show, a careful examination of the interaction between details of outer form and inner form raises interesting questions about Schenkerian theory and its application to fugues.(3) [2] Laurence Dreyfus, an outspoken critic of Schenkerian theory, notes the avoidance of the fugal genre in the Schenkerian literature and makes two specific points that directly relate to this study: [First], a Schenkerian analysis of a fugue is also of particular interest because the fugue, with its self-conscious manipulations of counterpoint, might not seem an obvious candidate for an approach oriented toward long-range voice-leading. (1996, 171) [Second], even orthodox Schenkerians will sometimes concede that Schenker does not “work well” in explicitly contrapuntal music such as fugues. This a itude is troubling. For if Schenker’s ideas, self-referential as they are, can only be challenged when socalled surface voice-leading like imitation and double counterpoint gets in the way, what guarantees that Schenker has not duped his readers when he analyzes Beethoven symphonies? (187) To the first point, mode","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49087752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Compositional Process and Technique in Happy Rain on a Spring Night (2004)","authors":"Chen Yi","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"The composer discusses her musical training at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and at Columbia University in New York, and the effect of that musical heritage on her compositional style. She describes the techniques she uses in her chamber ensemble Happy Rain on a Spring Night (2004), including the use of speech tones for the development of her pitch material, and the Golden section for proportional relationships in the formal structure of the work. Volume 26, Number 3, September 2020 Copyright © 2020 Society for Music Theory","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42337136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review of Keith Waters, Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea (Oxford University Press, 2019)","authors":"Ben Baker","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.14","url":null,"abstract":"[1] Keith Waters’s Postbop Jazz in the 1960s (2019) brings together more than two decades of work by one of the most prolific jazz scholars in music theory. Over the course of his academic career, Waters has focused consistently on the practices of a particular set of jazz musicians in the 1960s. During this period, the output of musicians like Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea often blended elements of tonal jazz from earlier decades—including bebop, hard bop, and soul jazz—with features of emergent modal and free (or avant-garde) jazz practices. Waters and others use the term postbop to refer to the compositional and improvisational tendencies that emerged from this confluence, which are exemplified by a small but influential repertoire of jazz compositions and associated recordings.(1) His enduring engagement with this music has yielded a series of widely cited publications. While a few of these studies broadly address improvisational (2013) or harmonic (Waters and Williams 2010) strategies, most confront analytical or methodological issues through the lens of a specific musician’s output. These include examinations of form and metric displacement in improvisations by Hancock and Keith Jarre (1996, 2001), nonfunctional harmony in compositions by Hancock (2005) and Corea (2016), the influence of the ic4 cycles in John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” on postbop composers (2010), and improvisatory practices in Miles Davis’s celebrated second quintet (2003, 2011).(2)","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45756040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prolongational Closure in the Lieder of Fanny Hensel","authors":"Stephen Rodgers, Tyler Osborne","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.8","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we explore Fanny Hensel’s songs that end without cadences but instead with what William Caplin (2018) calls “prolongational closure.” These songs, most of which come from the 1820s, are some of the earliest examples of piece-ending prolongational closure in the repertoire and thus offer important models for understanding how the technique was deployed by later composers. We propose three types of prolongational closure, drawn from a study of Hensel’s works—\".fn_scaledegree(5).\"–\".fn_scaledegree(1).\" fill, dominant substitution, and early pedal—and suggest that Hensel’s fascination with non-cadential endings offers yet more evidence that she was one of the most inventive composers in the first half of the nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43956748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}