Dominant Seventh Chords Research Articles

Mysterium Corpus: The Solo Piano Music of Alexander Scriabin

This article introduces the Mysterium corpus, the complete published oeuvre of Alexander Scriabin’s 207 solo piano works, and makes the corpus available in Humdrum’s kern format. Scriabin’s music presents distinct challenges, specifically in relation to his use of complex rhythmic and metric explorations and the idiosyncratic ways in which he notated his compositional ideas. While this sidetdataset is focused on Scriabin, the methodological challenges explored in the article may shed light on the encoding process for other related late-tonal and early post-tonal repertoires. As such, this article provides a case study of methodological considerations involved in systematically translating messy musical notations into a symbolic encoding of the musical data. Finally, this article provides descriptive statistics of the corpus, especially focusing on Scriabin’s treatment of meter and two harmonies (i.e., the dominant-seventh chord with lowered fifth, and the “Mystic” chord), and discusses the applicability of the Mysterium corpus for future research.

Recent Research in Singing

Recent Research in Singing Donald Simonson Click for larger view View full resolution Donald Simonson The following list of recent research in singing is a brief sampling of dissertations/theses published during the last year. It is by no means comprehensive and reflects only a small fraction of the available documents. If you have published recent research in singing, voice pedagogy, voice science, vocal repertoire, pedagogic methodology, or other topics of interest to the membership of NATS, please send citations and abstracts to Donald Simonson at drs@iastate.edu for review and possible inclusion in future columns. ________ Brown, Julie A. "The Unique 'Pelléas et Mélisande:' A Closer Look at Claude Debussy's One and Only Opera." MA Thesis, Webster University, St. Louis, 2021, 96 pages; ProQuest 2542413613. "French composer Claude Debussy's compositions symbolize the definition of twentieth century music. His use of unresolved wandering dominant seventh chords, the use of ninth, elevenths, and thirteenth chords, the use of pentatonic and whole-tone scales, and extreme dynamics and orchestral timbre are trademark characteristics of his style. However, it is the uniqueness of his only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, that elevates Debussy's music to a higher level and establishes his notoriety in the world of opera. The purpose of this thesis is to discover the various methods Debussy used in composing Pelléas et Mélisande that would classify Debussy's opera in its own category of uniqueness. This thesis also takes an in-depth look at the background of the opera and the libretto of Pelléas et Mélisande. It provides information on the plot, an analysis of the unaccompanied recitative and vocal inflection of the libretto with passing tones and neighbor tones, and the motifs Debussy used to establish his characters, and is supported by musical examples. Debussy's symbolism is discussed as well as his use of polytonality, polyrhythms, poly-meters, dynamic changes, and tempo changes. Finally, this thesis will show a comparison between Debussy's opera and Wagner's opera and give an orchestral and harmonic score analysis of Pelléas et Mélisande to discover what makes Debussy's one and only opera so unique." (ProQuest/Author Abstract) ________ Brown, Ryan Russell. "'We Tell Each Other Stories': Musical Dramaturgy in Craig Hella Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard." DMA Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2021, 181 pages; ProQuest 2555923452. "At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the number of choral organizations which pay their members has increased greatly. Along with the emergence of these professional choirs, there is an increased focus on considering the audience experience. One of the ways that professional choral organizations are seeking to elevate the audience experience is through storytelling. Consequently, professional choirs are commissioning and performing oratorios with greater frequency. Considering Matthew Shepard, a modern chamber oratorio composed by Craig Hella Johnson, serves as [End Page 533] an archetype of this new era of musical dramaturgy in choral music. Interviewing conductors of professional choirs and investigating practices in script-writing, the author applies modern concepts of narrative discourse to oratorio. The author explores musical dramaturgy within Considering Matthew Shepard using 'action analysis' and suggests performance practices which highlight the musical dramaturgy within the work." (ProQuest/Author Abstract) ________ Chan, Vania L. "Mindful Singing: Exploring Mindfulness and Self-Regulation in Classical Singing." PhD Dissertation, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2020, 166 pages; Access through the following link, Chan_Vania_L_2020_PhD.pdf (4.712Mb). "The harmonious partnership between the mind and body lies at the core of practice and performance for classical singers. Mindfulness (staying in the present moment) and Self-regulation (understanding and controlling one's own learning environment) are key concepts that when applied to the discipline of classical singing, could help to enhance the growth of efficient learning skills and healthy vocal development. This paper gathers the philosophies and perspectives of respected researchers (including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and K. Anders Ericsson), and organizes them into three separate stages: 1) Mindfulness Stage One—which involves mindfulness meditation, developing awareness and increased concentration by paying exclusive attention to the breath, 2) Self-Regulation—which centers on deliberate practice, the experts' approach to acquiring...

A Chord Recognition Method of Guitar Sound Using Its Constituent Tone Information

AbstractA simple method for identifying musical chords of audio sound played by a guitar is proposed herein. The chord recognition is achieved by comparing similarities between normalized note numbers extracted from the spectrum of the sound and those generated by a database. The database consists of normalized note numbers corresponding to the fundamental frequency of the chord notes, and the database of the chords with different root is shared. The database of five types of the chords were prepared; Major triad, Minor triad, Major seventh, Minor seventh, and Dominant seventh chords. The name of the chord is determined by the root played. Over 800 sounds of the chords played with electric guitars were tested, and the recognition rate showed good performance, which indicates the feasibility of this method. © 2021 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

The Musical Language of Rock

The Musical Language of Rock

The barbershop sound: The characteristic timbre of the male barbershop quartet

A feature of the homophonic barbershop style is an emphasis on major and dominant seventh chords which are sung with little vibrato and with pitches adjusted to achieve tuned chords in just intonation. A principal resource for the investigation reported here was the library of online recordings of the 2016 and 2017 international competitions sponsored by the Barbershop Harmony Society. These recordings provide a wealth of examples of the barbershop sound. They include hundreds of quartet samples performed in a context that features a uniform expectation of what constitutes good sound, along with uniform recording conditions and ranking by judges who serve as expert listeners. A large number of spectra were obtained for a loud, sustained major chord on an open vowel. Tuning of these chords was investigated, and for each sample a spectral contour was constructed with amplitudes normalized to simplify comparisons. From the consistency of these spectral contours it is possible to obtain a picture of the timbral features that distinguish the barbershop sound. In addition, patterns of relatively small differences in spectral envelope among the samples are strongly correlated with the ranking of the quartets by the competition judges.

The Art of Improvising: The Be-Bop Language and the Dominant Seventh Chords

The Art of Improvising: The Be-Bop Language and the Dominant Seventh Chords

The Art of Improvising: The Be-Bop Language and the Minor Seventh Chords

The aim of this article lies fundamentally in illustrating the first part of a simple and intuitive method, finalized to “speaking” the Be-Bop language immediately, without possessing any jazz background whatsoever. The main peculiarity of the method consists in the fact that the attention of the improviser is always focused on Triads. We herein exclusively discuss the improvisation techniques regarding the dominant seventh chords. Starting from a specific extended “sentence”, built around the Major Triad, we show how to instantly deduce further sentences, how to modify them, by cutting and adding “words”, and how to effectively combine them.

Changing Use of Seventh Chords: A Replication of Mauch et al. (2015)

Mauch, MacCallum, Levy, and Leroi (2015) carried out a large-scale study of changes in American popular music between 1960 and 2010. Using signal processing methods, they found evidence suggesting a decreasing use of the dominant seventh chord and increasing use of the minor-minor seventh chord. While signal analysis methods have improved substantially in recent years, the accuracy of signal-based analysis remains imperfect. Using a contrasting method and independent musical sample, this paper reports converging evidence replicating these findings.

A Gift to Goethe: The Aesthetics of the Intermediate Dominant in Schubert’s Music and Early Nineteenth-Century Theoretical Thought

Schubert is famous for his remote modulations, especially his third relations. He therefore has a reputation for harbouring an aversion to the dominant, both in terms of its function as a harmonic preparation for new keys and as a structural pole to the tonic home key. I turn to the history of theory to reveal a more nuanced history of Schubert’s attitude towards the dominant. In a revision of ‘Geistes-Gruß’ (D. 142), a song he sent to Goethe in 1816, Schubert added a brief dominant-seventh chord to soften an abrupt modulation to a remote key. Such an insertion between remote keys was coined an ‘intermediate dominant’ by Schubert’s contemporary Anton Reicha and was understood to be a sufficient preparation for a new remote key. In four subsequent versions of ‘Geistes-Gruß’, Schubert strengthened, rather than weakened, this intermediate dominant – only to remove it altogether in the final published version. I scrutinize Schubert’s use of intermediate dominants that, together with other techniques such as the use of silence, act as a harmonic cushion between abrupt third relations in a range of early multi-sectional songs and in the medial caesura-fill in the Unfinished and Great Symphonies. I compare Schubert’s compositional strategies with the theories of modulation and harmonic juxtaposition by his contemporary music theorists Anton Reicha and Gottfried Weber, and I argue that they share a strikingly similar aesthetic of the power of the intermediate dominant.

Perpaduan Nada‐nada dalam Perspektif Harmoni dan Aplikasinya Terhadap Mahasiswa

The combination of tones in the diatonic musical study is called the harmony. Harmony here is intended for the human voice, that encompasses the soprano (S) for high female voice, the alto (A) for low female voice, the tenor (T) for high male voice, and the bass (B) for low male voice. Each sound has a different register, as it was introduced at the beginning part of many harmony text books, for example the one that was written by Gustav Strube. The initial step of tonesarrangements is based on the tonic, dominant, and sub‐dominant chords. Because the triad chord is consists of 3 notes only while the four voices are needed in the SATB arrangement, doubling the one of triad components is necessary. In addition to doubling treatment we should be aware of applying the proper chord positions, whether it is the basic position (bass doubling), the first inversion (soprano doubling), or the second inversion (bass doubling). In the fourth voices chord, eg the dominant seventh chords, although it is possible to treat the doubling by eliminating the element of its tone composite, it is not usually applied due to the number of its chord tones is already four. While in its application to the student, it is better to be based on the memorization of basic chords, for example major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords, after that continued by working on the triad chord, four voice chords, and also the neapolitan sixth.

A Gedenkschrift for Karlheinz Stockhausen: Guest Editor's Introduction

A GEDENKSCHRIFT FOR KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION JEROME KOHL He thought that he, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while their artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. —Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund HIS GEDENKSCHRIFT (MEMORIAL COLLECTION) is a successor to and completion of the three-part 70th-birthday Festschrift for Stockhausen published in Perspectives of New Music 36/1, 36/2, and 37/1, which surveyed Stockhausen’s work from the beginnings through the earlier operas of the Licht cycle. Before he died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 79 on the morning of Wednesday, 5 December T Guest Editor’s Introduction 307 2007, he had completed that cycle of seven operas and had embarked on a new cycle of chamber compositions, collectively titled Klang: Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound: The 24 Hours of the Day). Now that all seven of the Licht operas have been staged, it is possible to begin serious evaluation of the cycle as a whole. Thomas Ulrich sets the stage with a survey of the Licht cycle from the perspective of the character Lucifer, and asks whether Stockhausen’s attitude to morality leaves him open to the charge of totalitarian thinking. The last opera to be composed, Sonntag, is then given detailed scrutiny in essays by Paul Miller (on the first scene, Lichter—Wasser) and Robin Hartwell (mainly focused on the last scene, Hoch-Zieten). Stockhausen’s compositional style continued to evolve through his last years, though opinions about this differ. The harmonic dimension in particular has been reported as having become milder and gentler. The musical language of Freitag aus Licht, for example, “is astonishing and weirdly beautiful—not quite tonal and yet tonally based, deceptively simple, robustly plain” (Murray 1996), and the music in Mittwoch, “while related in principle to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, often leans toward tonality” (Ross 2012, 105). To some extent this is the because parts of the Licht superformula focus on more consonant interval combinations. In other cases it is a product of compositional choice. A plain example of willful compositional choice is Stockhausen’s decision to omit the Bb from the Lucifer layer near the end of the superformula, leaving the clear G-major sonority that dominates Sonntag, especially in the opening scene, Lichter—Wasser. Robin Hartwell considers some possible dramaturgical and theological motivations for this choice—and some evidence of Stockhausen’s hesitation over it—in his article in this collection. As a counterexample of this effect as a native property of the superformula , a charming story is told by Suzanne Stephens about a captive audience of two hundred Rotarians at a banquet meeting in October 1997. Their president made a surprise announcement that, before the meal, they would be treated to the world premiere of a new composition by Stockhausen. Initial apprehension gave way to relief when they discovered, to their surprise, music “so consonant, so beautiful” that at the end, they gave a standing ovation (Stephens 1998). This was the Rotary Wind Quintet, a short work adapted from the ethereal vocal sextet, “Menschen hört” that closes Michaelion, the last scene of Mittwoch aus Licht. This work presents the Licht superformula in four progressively longer, more elaborate forms with the three melodic layers rotated 308 Perspectives of New Music vertically to conclude each time on a perfectly familiar C dominantseventh chord—first in root position, then in 4/2 and 6/5 inversions, and finally in root position again—and is scored for a conventional wind quintet, with its serenade associations. It is no wonder the Rotarians found it so easy to accept. While this apparent trend has displeased some doctrinaire modernists (such as the German critic Klaus Umbauch, who reviewed the Leipzig premiere of Freitag in 1996, and was answered by an eloquent letter to the editor (Leisten 1996), it has certainly improved Stockhausen’s standing with more conservative audiences. How is it, though, that when the identical music from the end of Michaelion is presented in the preceding scene of Mittwoch, scored for an ensemble at least as conventional as a wind quintet, it could be described as “a hideous amount...

Boris’s Bells, By Way of Schubert and Others

We define “bell chords” as different dominant-seventh chords whose roots are separated by multiples of interval 3, the minor third.The Boris bell chords are an early milestone in the history of nonfunctional harmony; yet the two harmonies, considered individually, are of course absolutely functional in classical contexts. This essay traces some of the historical antecedents of the bell chords as well as their developing descendants. The expectation of tonic harmony to follow a dominant-seventh sonority is a principal component of forehearing; we assume, in our ordinary and long-tested experience of tonal music, that the tonic function will follow the dominant-seventh function and be fortified by it. So familiar is this everyday phenomenon that it hardly needs to be stated; we need mention it here only to assert the contrary case, namely, that the dominant-seventh function followed by something else introduces the element of the unexpected.

The Influence of Harmoniccontext on the Tuning of Thirds Played by Professional Flautists

The aim of this study is to investigate how professional orchestral musicians perform major and minor thirds in different harmonic contexts. The intervals were recorded simultaneously, in the most natural acoustic conditions possible, by four professional flautists. The fundamental frequencies of thepitches were determined from the digital recording by Fourier transformation with a spectrum analysis programme. The intention of this was measurement precision of < 1 cent. The measured width of the intervals are compared with their pure, Pythagorean and equal tempered equivalents. The results show that, with major thirds and independent of the harmonic context, the pure tuning is preferred. With minor thirds, pure tuning prevails over equal temperamenttuning when the interval occurs within a harmonic context, such as a major triad or a dominant seventh chord. The Pythagorean tuning fares worse in terms of intonation in the performance of both intervals.

The 'Tristan Chord' as Music-Historical Metaphor

Before the curtain rises on the first act of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, many of the opera's key musical ideas have already been presented. In the opening measures of the Prelude, or Vorspiel, we hear the most immediately recognizable phrase of the entire work (see example 1). It renders audible the play of desire and death that permeates the opera. Its yearning melodic contour is articulated initially by the cellos, who are answered by a distinctive configuration of woodwinds. The chord that they play is pungently dissonant by the general standards of mid-nineteenth-century musical aesthetics. Though its sonority is delicious, it begs for resolution. This it receives, but the next chord itself must resolve according to traditional practice. This second chord is a `dominant seventh,' a characteristically penultimate sonority that `normally' leads to a consonant, restful tonic triad — particularly at the end of a piece. It is typical enough of Wagner's harmonic innovation that the dominant seventh chord does not resolve, but is simply left hanging; this procedure is in itself a musical symbol of the unsatisfied longings of the principal characters in the drama. However, it is the first chord of the work that has become an icon of late nineteenth-century harmonic language and has engendered a huge analytical literature. Generally known as the `Tristan' chord, it is itself one of the crucial leitmotifs of the work; its dramatic symbolism is multifaceted and depends largely on its situational and harmonic context.

The T-Hex Constellation

An interval string in Z12 is an ordered n-tuple of integers s = whose elements sum to 12; for example, a = and P = (we will generally use Greek lower-case letters for specific interval strings).' Given a pitch class p and a string s, a pitch-class set (chord, Klang, sonority, scale) in the usual chromatic universe is fully described by naming the ordered pair (p,s) = {Pk I Pk is the sum of p and the first k elements of s mod 12 (k = 0,1,...,n-1)}. Thus (4,a) = {4,7,11 }, an E minor triad, and (9,P) = { 9,1,4,7 }, a dominant seventh chord on A. If we are given a set X we will read $(X) as the interval string associated with X. Thus if X = {0,4,7 }, $(X) = . We will write ps for (p,s) where the context is clear, so in the current example, (4,a) may be written 4a.2 Following Morris's (1987) convention, for any given set A = ps, we define the interval-class (ic) vector as the ordered 7-tuple V(A) = [uou1...u6] where ui = #ici(A) is the multiplicity of ici in A. Thus for aX = , if A = 4a (our E-minor triad example from above), V(A) = [3001110]. We will now count the ics formed between two sets. For any two sets A = ps and B = qt, the vector spanning A and B is the ordered 7tuple V(A,B) = [vovI...v6] where vj = #icj(A,B) is the multiplicity of icj