Journal of Music Theory recent issues

Editor's Note

Quinn, I. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

Introduction

Bain, J. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

A Sarah Fuller Bibliography

Bain, J., Evans, M. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

Interpreting Hucbald on Mode

Fuller, S. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

Hucbald of St. Amand's treatise Musica took shape in the late Carolingian era in a time of intense and independent music-theoretical activity. Hucbald has been recognized as a pioneer who brought elements from Greek music theory to bear upon plainsong, but his view of mode has been considered rather routine. Through scrutiny of modal references and explanatory rhetoric within the treatise, this study corrects some modern readings of Hucbald's teaching on mode and offers a new assessment of the relationship between modal lore and venerable Boethian theory in Hucbald's theoretical universe. In Musica, a substratum of preexistent modal knowledge replaces Boethian number relationships as the foundation underlying basic elements of music theory.

Music in Dialogue: Conversational, Literary, and Didactic Discourse about Music in the Renaissance

Judd, C. C. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

This article takes Thomas Morley's A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) as a point of departure for exploring a group of sixteenth-century texts that place music, especially as represented by musical notation, within the form of a dialogue. Music and musical writings have barely figured in the study of the Renaissance dialogue, yet these works offer specific insights about the nature of the genre. In addition to Morley's treatise, works discussed in detail include Anton Francesco Doni's Dialogo della musica (1544), Gioseffo Zarlino's Dimostrationi harmoniche (1571), and Ercole Bottrigari's Il desiderio overo de' concerti (1594). The article focuses on the uniquely hybrid nature of each of these texts and the ways in which various generic constraints and demands of format interact. Musical treatises in dialogue format offer a special means of understanding the broader history of the dialogue and the role of spatiality and temporality in creating verisimilitude. While Doni's Dialogo may be seen as an attempt at interpolating "real music" into the conversational and literary genre of the dialogue, Morley's didactic treatise represents the culmination of that interpolation: the means for taking part in the original conversation, namely the ability to sing.

Reconsidering "High Style" and "Low Style" in Medieval Song

Aubrey, E. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

Using the concept of "style" in analysis runs the risk of circularity, where features of individual works are identified as belonging to a style whose definition itself is derived from those features. This pitfall undermines studies of the songs of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century troubadours and trouvères that delineate a "high style," including chansons, and a "low style," including dances and pastourelles. The dichotomy originated in the nineteenth century with Gaston Paris's concept of amour courtois, from which Roger Dragonetti later derived the term grand chant courtois, now a common label for "high-style" songs. Other literary scholars, notably Paul Zumthor and Pierre Bec, have discussed problems in classifying styles and genres. References to genres in medieval texts are ambiguous, and manuscripts rarely group songs by genre. Theorists such as Raimon Vidal, Jofre de Foixà, and Johannes de Grocheio do not present a clear-cut or consistent stratification of genres. John Stevens, Christopher Page, and others have proposed features of "high style" and "low style" that do not entirely agree. An examination of their examples and additional ones demonstrates that a perception of "style" can be subjective and circular, and that the notion of "high style" and "low style" is an oversimplification.

Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style

Bain, J. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

The music of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) has often been described as standing outside medieval chant traditions. This article argues that although many features of her music deviate from early chant, her repertoire conforms instead in remarkable ways with a late chant style, which appeared first in the eleventh century. Detailed analysis and comparison of the music (and theory) of Hermannus Contractus (1013-1054) with Hildegard's demonstrates a shared emphasis on Hermannus's modal nodes of final, fifth, and octave. Further analyses of antiphons from the later Middle Ages for Saints Hubert and Roch, as found in the Salzinnes Antiphonal, confirm that this musical style prevailed for several centuries. A contextualization of Hildegard's musical output makes it clear that she was not as isolated musically (or as musically untutored) as generally thought, but rather immersed in the musical traditions of her day. A historiographical overview reveals that nineteenth-century scholars were already aware of these similarities, in contrast to scholarship of the last thirty years, which has focused on Hildegard's originality.

Music Theory from Boethius to Zarlino: A Bibliography and Guide

Maloy, R. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages

Newes, V. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:26 PST

The Hexatonic and the Double Tonic: Wolf's Christmas Rose

BaileyShea, M. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

This article analyzes Hugo Wolf's Auf eine Christblume I and II in relation to Robert Bailey's concept of the "double-tonic complex." These songs project an intricate pairing of D and F# tonalities that often result in various hexatonic relationships. My interpretation associates the D/F# complex with the central poetic subject: the Christmas rose. The article introduces Wolf's setting, reevaluates Bailey's idea, and offers an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of the two songs.

Humperdinck and Wagner: Metric States, Symmetries, and Systems

Leong, D. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

Building upon recent geometric models of metric states by Richard Cohn and Scott Murphy, this article proposes a complementary model that expands the metric states that can be considered, relates states by symmetries, and creates systems of such states. Application of the model to Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel and Richard Wagner's Parsifal reveals metric-dramatic strategies common to the two operas: certain metric symmetries parallel certain dramatic ones.

Moved by Nothing: Listening to Musical Silence

Margulis, E. H. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

This article explores the functions of silence in common-practice music, with an emphasis on the characteristics of perceived silence as distinct from notated and acoustic silence. Context is shown to guide listening in complex ways that enable the same acoustic silence, embedded in different musical surroundings, to encourage widely divergent perceptions. Five functions of silence are explored: silence as boundary, silence as interruption, silence as a revealer of the inner ear, silence as a promoter of meta-listening, and silence as a communicator. The article's account of silence emphasizes the active, participatory nature of music listening and addresses the implications for thought about music cognition and experience.

Continuous Harmonic Spaces

Callender, C. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

This article generalizes Ian Quinn's recent harmonic characterization of pitch-class sets in equal tempered spaces to chords drawn from continuous pitch and pitch-class spaces. Using the Fourier transform, chords of any real-valued pitches or pitch classes are represented by their spectra and located in a harmonic space of all possible chord spectra. Euclidean and angular distance metrics defined on chord spectra correlate strongly with common interval-based similarity measures such as IcVSIM and ANGLE. Thus, we can approximate these common measures of harmonic similarity in continuous environments, applying the corresponding harmonic intuitions to all possible chords of pitches and pitch classes in all possible tuning systems. This Fourier-based approach to harmony is used to compare the properties of twelve-note chords in Witold Lutoslawski and Elliot Carter, to analyze the opening section of Gérard Grisey's Partiels, and to investigate the structural properties underlying the Z-relation (part of ongoing research with Rachel Hall).

A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

Steinbeck, P. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

Editor's Note

Quinn, I. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

Introduction

Gjerdingen, R. O. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

Heinichen, Rameau, and the Italian Thoroughbass Tradition: Concepts of Tonality and Chord in the Rule of the Octave

Holtmeier, L. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

This essay explores the understanding of tonality and in particular the concept of chord, as demonstrated in the Italian thoroughbass tradition, especially in the didactic tradition of partimenti. For a long time this tradition was entirely overlooked because of the dominance of the neo-Ramellian Harmonielehre tradition. The differences are exemplified by comparing Rameau's basse fondamentale with Heinichen's fluctuating understanding of tonality. It was Heinichen who, at the start of the eighteenth century, attempted most thoroughly to conceptualize Italian music theory. Like Rameau, he, too, developed an overarching explanatory model of harmony that involves coherent concepts of harmonic functionality and chord morphology. Heinichen's and Rameau's "systems," however, rest on opposing assumptions. However many speculative aspects it may embrace, Heinichen's music theory nonetheless remains directly indebted to musical practice and consistently rejects that esprit du système that is so characteristic of Rameau's theory. While Rameau, acting in the modern, scientific spirit of the early Enlightenment, attempts to derive all aspects of his theory from a few fundamental principles, Heinichen works through the many tensions and contradictions between the modern Klang progression, as formalized in the Rule of the Octave, and the old legacy of traditional counterpoint instruction.

The Realization of Partimenti: An Introduction

Sanguinetti, G. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

A partimento is a linear guide for the improvisation of a keyboard piece. Partimenti were developed for the training of composers in the conservatories of Naples during the eighteenth century. They contain all the information needed for the realization of complete pieces of music, and their practice bestowed on practitioners a fluency in composition unparalleled since then. The Neapolitan masters usually recommended different stages of realization, from the simplest (con le sole consonanze) to highly elaborate textures. The rules for the realization of partimenti have survived in many sources, but they cover only the first stage of realization because the techniques for more advanced realizations were transmitted orally. With the decadence and extinction of the living tradition, the realization of partimenti became a lost art. However, some principles for advanced realization may be inferred from the surviving written realizations, and from the analysis of the partimento in question. Relying on the foundation formed by the rules, and integrating them with these principles, the present article shows some examples of how a present-day musician can create a satisfying realization.

Partimento, que me veux-tu?

Gjerdingen, R. O. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, eighteenth-century French author and philosopher, was first a musician. As a youth he had been unable to find a qualified music master and hence lacked the training required to excel in his chosen field. He did read carefully the harmony treatise of Jean-Philippe Rameau, but that study neither advanced his compositional abilities nor later shielded him from the scorn of Rameau himself. Had Rousseau found a master of the then fashionable Italian style of music, he would have studied exercises in partimenti and solfeggi. Solfeggi were studies for voice with bass accompaniment. Partimenti were instructional basses from which an apprentice was expected to re-create complete compositions at the keyboard. The prodigious mental powers developed through the study of partimenti, which greatly facilitated improvisation and composition, gave a competitive advantage to composers so trained. Though an old, nonverbal method of craft instruction, partimenti were nonetheless a cognitively optimal means of developing fluency in a complex, multivoice style of music. In memorizing exemplars of small contrapuntal schemata, fitting them to the matching locations in a partimento, and then realizing them in a current style, the apprentice was training himself to think in "free" counterpoint.

The Early Reception of Neapolitan Partimento Theory in France: A Survey

Cafiero, R. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

The tradition of the Neapolitan school of composition (in which the partimento and its teaching techniques played a significant role) had a major influence on musical training in Paris from the second half of the eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century. This article focuses first on some significant witnesses of this era (Fedele Fenaroli and Emanuele Imbimbo, who followed the school of Francesco Durante) and then on an interpretation of the traditionally nonverbal rules of partimenti proposed by François-Joseph Fétis.

Partimenti in the Age of Romanticism: Raimondi, Platania, and Boucheron

Stella, G. — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 PST

The teaching of music composition in Italy during the nineteenth century continued to make great use of partimenti. But during the course of the century, partimenti gradually lost their importance as guides to improvisation, transforming instead into blueprints for a written-out practice. Prominent musicians and teachers like Pietro Raimondi, Pietro Platania, and Raimondo Boucheron tried to merge the partimento tradition with the harmonic and formal innovations of their own era. Raimondi and Platania, significant exponents of the late Neapolitan school of composition, searched for innovation from within their own tradition. Boucheron, in Milan, deeply influenced by French and German theorists, used partimenti as a medium through which he could introduce elements of Romantic harmony. The partimento lessons of all three display not only a musical sophistication that merits our attention today, but also an insider's perspective on issues in nineteenth-century Italian composition.

Harmonic Cross-Reference and the Dialectic of Articulation and Continuity in Sonata Expositions of Schubert and Brahms

Smith, P. H. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST

Associative harmony functions as a powerful resource through which Schubert and Brahms fashion continuities within the dialectic of articulation and continuity that stands at the heart of the Viennese sonata style. More specifically, the technique of harmonic cross-reference provides these composers with one among a number of integrative strategies to counterbalance the threat of self-contained lyricism in the middle sections of their tripartite expositions. In one type of expositional context, this integration involves harmonic linkage designed specifically to efface a formal boundary. In a second type, it involves a more general sense of continuity between formal sections.

The study of harmonic cross-reference in the three-key expositions of Schubert's Quartettsatz and String Quintet and Brahms's Second Symphony and Clarinet Trio reveals a tension between functional distinctions for the sonorities involved (as defined by Schenkerian analysis), and the interconnection of these sonorities in processes of motivic development. Through this motivic interconnection, the sonorities achieve an ontological status partially independent of their individual linear-contrapuntal environments. Each motivic harmony gains meaning through its particular tonal function, but each also exists within a network of associative connection based more generally on chord identity.

Form, Structure, and Musical Drama in Two Mozart Expositions

Suurpaa, L. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST

This study examines interactions among form, Schenkerian voice-leading structure, and certain dramatic features in two Mozart expositions: the second movement of the G-minor symphony, K. 550, and the opening movement of the G-minor string quintet, K. 516. The analyses frequently refer to two concepts: "dramatic fitness" and "rational acceptability." The former clarifies dramatic aspects of the expositions, such features as uncertainty, postponement of resolutions, or false clues. The latter charts the scope of technically possible analytical alternatives within the applied theoretical contexts. Ultimately, the dramatic and technical factors are intertwined. Context also plays an important role in arriving at a plausible interpretation: In these expositions, the first impression suggested by the local context often changes when the ensuing musical material, the global context, is taken into consideration.

The Cadenza as Parenthesis: An Analytic Approach

Bribitzer-Stull, M. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST

Conventional wisdom holds that the cadenza is a musical parenthesis. Like linguistic parenthetical remarks, cadenzas may be engaging, illuminating, and insightful, but they are not regarded as intrinsic to structural coherence. Perhaps for this reason, the topic has remained parenthetical in modern music theory discourse. Despite the connotations this neglect implies, the cadenza tradition stands as one endowed with great musical richness, worthy of further analytic investigation.

This article seeks to define the dual function of the cadenza. Specifically, the cadenza is heard simultaneously as a local, harmonic event and as a global, formal event. On the local level, it may either prolong one harmony or progress from one to another. On the global level, it can serve a variety of formal functions: highlighting salient cadences; opening a space for virtuosic display; and developing, relating, and rehearing elements of the concerto movement proper.

The cadenza's dual function grants it a potential far exceeding the simple characterization as parenthesis. Skillfully composed cadenzas exploit the tension between local and global functions and can initiate subtle yet profound rehearings of music outside cadenza space—rehearings that give us pause to reconsider both the cadenza-as-parenthesis metaphor and the artificial boundaries we construct among composer, performer, and analyst.

Schubert, Chromaticism, and the Ascending 5-6 Sequence

Damschroder, D. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST

A diverse selection of wondrously creative renderings by Franz Schubert of the ascending 5-6 sequence serves as the foundation for a reevaluation of the procedure and of the analytical tools used to describe it and to assess its role within a musical and (for texted music) poetical context. A range of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century thought on both sequential progression and harmonic analysis in general, by Emanuel Aloys Förster, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, and Gottfried Weber, among others, is assayed. Opportunities for chromaticism within the 5 and 6 phases of the 5-6 cycle are separately considered. The 5-phase trajectories are classified as diatonic, idiosyncratic, or obstinate. Despite its long history and current dominance, the mode of analysis based on Roman numerals and tonicizations is eschewed for sequential progressions. Instead, the connective role of sequential progressions within broader harmonic progressions is emphasized.

Music in the Galant Style

Temperley, D. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST

Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians, and Instrument Makers in Nineteenth-Century Germany; Helmholtz Musicus: Die Objektivierung der Musik im 19. Jahrhundert durch Helmholtz' Lehre von den Tonempfindungen

Steege, B. — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 PST