2015/09/18 by Joshua Banks Mailman · 16 citations
Neuroscience · Computer Science · Mathematics · #Neuroscience and Music Perception #Music and Audio Processing #Music Technology and Sound Studies #Chord (peer-to-peer) #Melody #Chordal graph #Mathematics #Consonance and dissonance #Computer science #Art #Combinatorics #Literature #Musical #Acoustics
paper · doi:10.1093/mts/mtv015
published in Music Theory Spectrum 37(2), 224-252 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2015/09/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This article considers the chronological flow of Schoenberg's chordal atonal music, using melodic contour and other contextual features to prioritize some chordal events over others. These nonconsecutive chords are tracked and compared for their coloristic contrasts, producing an unfolding akin to Klangfarbenmelodie, but paced more like a narrative trajectory in a drama. The dramatic pacing enhances discernment of nuance among atonal dissonant chords, thereby emancipating them from subordinate obscurity to vivid distinctness. Thus Schoenberg's music is strategically configured to differentiate its own pitch material. This approach is theorized in terms of representational hierarchy association (RHA) among chords, and demonstrated in analyses of Op. 11, No. 2, Op. 21, No. 4, and Op. 19, No. 3. In support, the analyses consider: (1) the combinatorics of voicing as effecting contrasts of timbre; (2) an application of Lewin's Binary State Generalized Interval System (GIS) to melodic contour and motivic transformation based on binary-state switching; (3) Klumpenhouwer Networks to model chord-to-chord connections hierarchically; and (4) the role of pitch-class set genera (families of chords) in projecting a palindromic arch form.