The Concept of Mutability in Russian Theory

Abstract

In the last several decades, some important studies, such as those by Christopher Lewis, Harald Krebs, William Kinderman, and William Rothstein, have explored alternatives to monotonality in tonal music. In this paper, I discuss the concept ofperemennost’(mutability), which addresses the same problem from a Russian perspective. Mutability is generally defined as a fluctuation between two diatonically related tonal centers, usually a third apart. However, this somewhat narrow definition does not capture the notion in all its richness; the concept of mutability evolved significantly over the course of the last century. I explore this concept in the writings of six twentieth-century Russian theorists: Boleslav Iavorskiĭ, Lev Mazel, Viktor Berkov, Igor Sposobin, Iuriĭ Kholopov, and Andrei Miasoedov.