Minor Tonality Research Articles

AN APPROACH TO TEACHING MODES

Modes have historically been at the centre of music until the end of the Renaissance period, and were ignored for a while with the tonal system in the Baroque period and afterwards. However, in the contemporary period, with the search for new music, they started to gain popularity again and continued to be used as major and minor tonalities. Modes, which have their own unique interval structure, have a different sound scale and feeling compared to major and minor tonalities. For this reason, it takes some time for students who have tonal sensation and practice habits to learn and understand the modes. In many written sources, the concept of mode is explained by associating it with the major scale degrees. This way of expression increases the possibility of making mistakes because it is an indirect way. In this study, it is aimed to present a different approach to the teaching of modes, and examples of the way to be followed are given.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0051/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Improving Students’ Aural Skills on the AP Music Theory Exam

In the past six years, more than 40,000 students have failed the AP Music Theory Exam. Students have struggled especially when sight-singing or taking melodic dictation in compound meter and minor tonality. Research has shown that students can improve these specific aural skills through learning pitch and rhythm patterns, improvisation activities, and learning from musical literature. This article includes research-based practical applications for helping students improve their aural skills for the AP Music Theory Exam.

Tectonic Techniques of Polyphony in Terms of General Musical Universals

Relevance of the study. The study of the fundamental principles of polyphonic thinking is an urgent task of modern theoretical musicology and it inextricably deals with the coverage of musical universals and understanding the interrelation of these phenomena in a diachronic aspect, in accordance with the different genre-stylistic and historical conditions of the polyphonic multi-voice writing. The use of the term “tectonics”, despite its systematic use in musicological discourse, calls for a refinement of its conceptual content and terminological boundaries (Latin “terminus” — “limit”, “boundary”) with its respect to the notion of architectonics that is not identical to it.The most important methodological impetus for the concept of the paper was S. Taneyev's conclusions about the “brackets” which unites the music system at various stages of its historical evolution. Among the most essential of them in the strict style of the polyphony, he notes the reception of imitation and the verbal text. Reflecting on the further ways of the musical system at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, S. Taneyev notes as the next main factor forming a major and minor tonality, which does not require any text or imitation in the function of the main connecting elements. On this basis, in the conditions of “omni-tonality” (F. J. Fetis) of the 20th century, S. Taneyev confidently predicts the inevitable further revival of polyphonic constructive techniques. Based on Taneyev's diachronic and genetic methods, the verbal text is considered by us as a historically conditioned component of a monody and as the bearing tectonic bracket — “prototekton” — of arising later vocal polyphony, which based on it.The problem of musical universals, which is concerned in the article of I. Pyaskovsky, devoted to the historical development of polyphonic treatment, is also topical for our study. I. Pyaskovsky offers a much broader interpretation of polyphonic treatment as a solid tradition of composing work with a primary source (in particular, monody), which can be reduced to two basic approaches at the level of writing (compositional techniques): a work with “commenting”, counterpointing, material and a processing of the original song's source. The methods of polyphonic work described by I. Pyaskovsky typologically stable in various historical and stylistic conditions with the original source have a direct relation to monody — both its initial impulse and simultaneously the most important musical universal, according to Yu. Konu. The result of thinking about the polyphonic treatment of monody was developed in the ideas of Yu. Kon. I. Pyaskovsky refers to these attributes as follows:The dominant function of the monody in the past is those cultures that have turned to polyphonic treatment.Transition to the polyphony, conditioned by the rhythm-intonation specificity of monody.The idea of counterpoint as the coordination of voices on the vertical.Presence of conditions and developed forms of notation fixation.The existence of a musical tradition in the historical conditions of treatment a monodic original source as a source material.Main objective of the study. Based on the listed above methodological guidelines, it becomes possible, firstly, to clarify the internal interrelationships of the categories of musical universals with the support tectonic clamps of the polyphony, and, secondly, their sequential diachronic analysis. Establishing the interdependence of these categories, we observe unconditionally unequal conceptual volume and a different cognitive orientation (this is reflected even on the etymological level). The doctrine of musical universals belongs, according to Yu. Kohn, to the philosophy of the art of sounds (the theory of music in expanded meaning), at that time tectonic level is an object of theoretical and practical study of diversified musical science (i. e. theory in the narrow sense). However, it is noticeable that there is something in common between these spheres, namely, the presence in their composition of a monody.Conclusions. The article considers common, particularly diachronic, structural tectonic techniques of polyphonic, especially non-imitative, polyphony, in their relationship with the general musical universals. It found that unlike “tectonics”, the concept of architectonics in art reflects the more typed principles of shape formation, dealing not with elements but with components of a composite structure. The steady mediated effect of musical universals on the tectonic level of polyphony is revealed. It is noted that monody is an integral internal formant of the polyphony, functionally embedded in tectonic framework of polyphony as the source, laid in its basis.

Peculiarities of the embodiment of H. Heine’s poetry translations in the vocal cycle of D. Klebanov

Peculiarities of the embodiment of H. Heine’s poetry translations in the vocal cycle of D. Klebanov

A Molecular Logic of Chords and Their Internal Harmony

Chords are not pure sets of tones or notes. They are mainly characterized by their matrices. A chord matrix is the pattern of all the lengths of intervals given without further context. Chords are well-structured invariants. They show their inner logical form. This opens up the possibility to develop a molecular logic of chords. Chords are our primitive, but, nevertheless, already interrelated expressions. The logical space of internal harmony is our well-known chromatic scale represented by an infinite line of integers. Internal harmony is nothing more than the pure interrelatedness of two or more chords. We consider three cases: (a) chords inferentially related to subchords, (b) pairs of chords in the space of major–minor tonality and (c) arbitrary chords as arguments of unary chord operators in relation to their outputs. One interesting result is that chord negation transforms any pure major chord into its pure minor chord and vice versa. Another one is the fact that the negation of chords with symmetric matrices does not change anything. A molecular logic of chords is mainly characterized by combining general rules for chord operators with the inner logical form of their arguments.

In Pursuit of a Single Flame? On Schubert’s Settings of Goethe’s Poems

Much musicological and historicist criticism has tended to ‘flatten’ Goethe by confining him to the thought-clichés of his time, and this in turn has led to an implicitly patronizing view of him as musically conservative. This article will show how Goethe proves again and again to be more musically intelligent and perceptive than scholars have given him credit for. Certain musicological questions engross the poet throughout his life: the nature of major and minor tonalities; musical identity throughout the ages; music and text; the rhetoric of attentive listening; musical language and its capacity to occlude and exclude. Yet Goethe’s thought, this article demonstrates, is anything but static; his writings keep returning to, modifying and complicating his musical preoccupations.This article challenges the salient misconception that Goethe’s lack of musical judgement divorced him from the development of the nineteenth-century Lied and that Schubert’s settings ran counter to the poet’s intent. Two new readings of ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ and ‘Erster Verlust’ show how Schubert is listening to the poetry and the upshot is not a song that reflects the poem but one that reflects on it.

The emotional connotations of major versus minor tonality: One or more origins?

The association between major/minor tonality and positive/negative emotional valence is psychologically robust, but without a single accepted explanation. I compare six partially related theories. Dissonance: On average, passages in minor keys are more dissonant because, on average, the minor triad is more dissonant (rougher, less harmonic) or because tonal structure is more complex. Alterity and markedness: Major triads and scales are more common than minor, and positive valence is more common than negative. Major and positive valence are the norm; minor and negative are marked Others. Uncertainty: The minor triad has a more ambiguous (less salient) root than the major, and the minor scale has more variable form and a more ambiguous (less stable) tonic; uncertainty is associated with anger, sadness, distress, and grief. Speech: By comparison to major triads and scales, minor contain pitch(es) that are lower than expected – just as sad speech is lower than expected. Salience: In diatonic chord progressions, flattened diatonic scale degrees are more salient than sharpened because their harmonics better match the prevailing scale. Scale degrees 3 and 6 are more likely to destabilize tonality in minor than major tonalities. Familiarity: Arbitrary emotional differences between major and minor were reinforced in a historical process of cultural differentiation. For each theory, there are credible arguments and evidence for and against. All theories are broadly consistent with Terhardt’s pattern-recognition model of pitch perception (non-musical perceptual familiarity with the harmonic series), Schenker’s concept of prolongation (specifically, tonal voice leading as a prolongation of the tonic triad), evolutionary explanations of the emotional connotations of alterity, and a psychohistory of tonality in which melody, polyphony, leading tones, and the major–minor system emerged at different times, explicable by different psychological principles.

Memory for musical tones: the impact of tonality and the creation of false memories.

Although the relation between tonality and musical memory has been fairly well-studied, less is known regarding the contribution of tonal-schematic expectancies to this relation. Three experiments investigated the influence of tonal expectancies on memory for single tones in a tonal melodic context. In the first experiment, listener responses indicated superior recognition of both expected and unexpected targets in a major tonal context than for moderately expected targets. Importantly, and in support of previous work on false memories, listener responses also revealed a higher false alarm rate for expected than unexpected targets. These results indicate roles for tonal schematic congruency as well as distinctiveness in memory for melodic tones. The second experiment utilized minor melodies, which weakened tonal expectancies since the minor tonality can be represented in three forms simultaneously. Finally, tonal expectancies were abolished entirely in the third experiment through the use of atonal melodies. Accordingly, the expectancy-based results observed in the first experiment were disrupted in the second experiment, and disappeared in the third experiment. These results are discussed in light of schema theory, musical expectancy, and classic memory work on the availability and distinctiveness heuristics.

Formal Mixture in the Sonata-Form Movements of Middle- and Late-Period Beethoven

Modal mixture is defined as a local colouration of a diatonic progression by borrowing tones or chords from the parallel major or minor tonality. In his efforts to expand tonal resources, Beethoven took this technique further: he borrowed large-scale tonal processes from a composition’s parallel tonality, a technique that I term formal mixture. After tracing its origin to certain works by J. S. Bach, C. P. E Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, and Joseph Haydn, I demonstrate how Beethoven built upon his predecessors’ use of the technique throughout his career, thereby expanding and diversifying the tonal resources of late classical era sonata forms.

Tonal hierarchy representations in auditory imagery

Two experiments investigated psychological representations of musical tonality in auditory imagery. In Experiment 1, musically trained participants heard a single tone as a perceptual cue and built an auditory image of a specified major tonality based on that cue; participants' images were then assessed using judgments of probe tones. In Experiment 2 participants imaged a minor tonality rather than a major one. Analysis of the probe tone ratings indicated that participants successfully imaged both major and minor tonal hierarchies, demonstrating that auditory imagery functions comparably to auditory perception. In addition, the strength of the major tonal image was dependent upon the pitch and tonal relations of the perceptual cue and the to-be-imaged tonality. Finally, representations of minor tonal hierarchies were less robust than those of major ones, converging with perceptual evidence that minor tonalities are less psychologically stable than major tonalities.

Paleoproterozoic collisional and intraplate granitoids of the southwest margin of the Siberian craton: Petrogeochemical features and U-Pb geochronological and Sm-Nd isotopic data

Accretion of the Archean blocks of the continental crust 1.95-1.90 Ga ago that caused the formation of the Paleoproterozoic supercontinent Pangea I (1) was accompanied by metamorphism and intensive granite formation in collisional orogenes. Paleoproterozoic collisional granitoids are widely represented in the uplifts of the Eurasian platform basement: on the Ukrainian, Anabar, and AldanoStanovoi shields as well as along the southwestern margin of the Siberian craton. They form extended belts consisting of domi� nating posttectonic microcline granites with minor tonalities, granodiorites and quartz syenites predomi� nantly of sodium-potassium calcalkaline magmatic series. Their characteristic feature is enrichment by largeionic and high field strength elements, light lan� thanoids, uranium, and especially thorium (2). Fur� ther sialization of the crust and increasing of the degree of its geochemical differentiation (maturity) were important consequences of this powerful process of granite formation. The extended belt of the Paleoproterozoic grani� toids marks uplifts of the Siberian craton basement along the modern southwestern and southern margins tracing in the structures of the Yenisey ridge, Prisaya� nie, Pribaikalie, and AldanoStanovoi shield. Forma� tion of the belt was accompanied by the first occur� rence of sodiumpotassium granitoid magmatism, which was the most powerful for this segment of the Earth and occurred in the interval 1.90-1.75 Ga ago. Granite formation was caused by accretioncollisional and, as was established recently (3), subsequent intra� plate processes. In the present work by the example of the investiga� tion of the Taraka massif of the south Yenisey Ridge, the multistage character of the rock associations com� posing the massif varying in age as well as in composi� tion was proved. For the first time, the results of the petrogeochemical and isotopegeochronological investigations of the intraplate (anorogenic) granites were presented. These granites were distinguished by the authors within this massif due to their enrichment in thorium and rare earth elements. The variety of geo� dynamic conditions of granitoid formation and pro� longed multistage evolution of the Paleoproterozoic granite formation were noted. Wider development of anorogenic granites within the mentioned belt was shown.

Bruckner and the Phrygian Mode

The re-emergence of modality in the harmonic language of nineteenth-century music is illustrated with examples drawn from Beethoven. The characteristics of the Phrygian mode are examined and it is argued that in some of Bruckner's small-scale sacred works he employs it as the principal tonal centre. Bruckner treats the Phrygian mode in his symphonies as a third force alongside major and minor tonality, especially in the Sixth Symphony, in which its juxtaposition with the nominal key of A major generates the central tonal argument.

Effects of Melodic Pattern Difficulty and Performance Experience on Ability to Play by Ear

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the relative difficulty of playing selected types of melodic patterns by ear. Ancillary purposes were to study the effects of performance experience and instrument family on the ability to play by ear, and to investigate the relationship between tonal aptitude and ability to play by ear. Results indicated that (a) descending patterns are more challenging than ascending; (b) patterns in minor tonality are more difficult to play by ear than are those in major; (c) students tend to continue using a familiar (though incorrect) fingering pattern on the repetition of a melodic pattern in a less familiar key, even when it seems that the students realize it is incorrect; and (d) shifting the last pitch of a pattern is easier than shifting the middle pitch. Results showed there was no difference in the ability to play by ear when considering performance experience, instrument family, or the interaction between performance experience and instrument family. There was a moderate positive relationship between tonal aptitude and ability to play by ear for 7th-grade students in this investigation.

VW9 and the ‘St. Matthew Passion’

On the face of it, Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony are two works which could hardly have less in common. Even the one feature they might be said to share at the outset – some form of E minor tonality – has come to divide them by the end: the Baroqueperiod work concludes not in the starting key but in a ‘progressive’ C minor, and it is, curiously, the 20th-century symphony which not only returns to its original tonic but also makes use of the Baroque feature of the ‘picardy third’.

Minor Tonality Music Preference and Oral Dependency

Abstract The literature on the affective connotations of musical tonality is reviewed, and the preference for minor (as opposed to major) tonality is hypothesized to relate to a stance of beseeching and need. This stance is congruent with the personality stereotype of oral dependence as it is formulated in psychoanalytic theory. Subjects (N = 108) were administered the Rorschach, which was scored for the psychosexual fixation areas by using content-scoring techniques; the subjects were also presented four musical passages, each of which was played on the piano in both major and minor key. Preference for minor tonality was shown to correlate with oral dependency, although the portion of variance accounted for by this relation was small. The modest confirmation of the hypothesis is discussed in the context of similar result patterns in other empirical studies of psychoanalytic theory.

The Effect of Tonal Pattern Training on the Aural Perception, Reading Recognition, and Melodic Sight-Reading Achievement of First-Year Instrumental Music Students

This study investigated the relationship of tonal pattern instruction to tonal concept development and performance achievement of beginning instrumentalists. The problem was to compare a course of study emphasizing tonal concept development with another emphasizing technical skill development Forty-eight subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group or the control group. Experimental group content included tonal patterns taught through harmonization and vocalization. Control group content included a set of symbols and range of pitches taught from notation. Students received 14 weekly 30-minute lessons. A one-factor design was employed. The independent variable was teaching content. The dependent variables were pastiest mean scores from Iowa Tests of Musical Literacy and an investigator-constructed sight reading test Analysis of covariance was used. The experimental group scored significantly higher (p < .001) on aural identification of major and minor tonalities and significantly higher (p < ....

Perceived Relatedness of Musical Tones in Major and Minor Tonal Contexts

A scaling study compared the utilization of major and minor tonalities as frameworks for judging the relatedness of musical tones. Subjects judged how related one test tone was to another in the context of a major or natural minor scale. In general, the larger the musical interval created by the test tones, the less related the tones were judged to be. However, for a given interval size, tonic-chord tone pairs received higher relatedness ratings than other-scale pairs, which in turn received higher ratings than nonscale pairs, but only in the major scale context. When the test tones were from two different groups, the ratings were often asymmetric, reflecting the consistent assignment of tones to different levels within the hierarchy of tonal functions. A regular pattern of asymmetries was observed in the major but not the minor context. Multidimensional scaling of the ratings showed that the minor context was less effective than the major in suggesting a clear distinction among tonic-chord, other-scale, and nonscale groups of tones. An explanation is given which suggests that a minor scale makes contact with an internal representation which, because of a basic difference between major and minor scales, is necessarily more ambiguous than the representation of a major scale.

An index of melodic activity

Abstract Melodic activity is defined in terms of the relative frequencies and magnitudes of the combinations of durations of notes and pitch‐leaps between adjacent notes of a melody. An index which is a combination of both of the above influences, and which reflects lesser and greater states of melodic activity, is developed at the microscopic level of note‐to‐note succession. The index is extended to encompass larger melodic units, allowing for the comparison of the melodic activity of one melody with another. The analysis of the two ingredients, and the rankings provided by the index, document stylistic characteristics associated with J. S. Bach: the preponderance of conjunct motion and its association with notes of short duration, different levels of melodic activity with respect to major and minor tonalities, and so forth. The suggestion is made that melodic activity is a parameter of psychological perception within the Western tradition, along with pitch, loudness, duration and dissonance.

The "Case" of Tobias Pearson: Hawthorne and the Ambiguities

IT IS PROBABLY a textbook platitude that Hawthorne presents a constant awareness of, and, one almost suspects, a perverse delight in, the element of paradox. It is for him, as it is for Melville, and Henry James, and Edwin Arlington Robinson, and T. S. Eliot, a core realization. Thus, with regard to affirmations or to taking sides, Hawthorne characteristically refuses to commit himself, often indulging in a perhaps typical New England circumlocution.' At leagt once, however, in Gentle Boy, Hawthorne erects a structure of avowal as unflinching as Melville's basic pronouncement in Pierre. It is not as impressive in magnitude, not as eloquently, even melodramatically explored or asserted; but it exists with such clarity of outline that for once we may say of it, and of Hawthorne, This is the case. The present juxtaposition of Hawthorne with Melville is not a casual one. Their mutual preoccupations with the great indefinables of human experience-Sin, Free Will, Truth, the very nature of man and his universe-postulate them, uniquely in American literature, as tragic artists. For both, existence objectifies itself as Good-and-Evil, as inevitably hyphenated. Both voice the minor tonalities of disenchantment, although there is an obvious difference in dynamics and instrumentation: the difference between the quiet skepticisms of the observer, remote enough from the anguish of the battlefield to be poised and restrained to the point of ambiguity, and the impassioned avowals -of the survivor who needs no other words than his raw wounds to communicate the desperateness of the conflict. Yet one can, and does, illuminate the other. Ethically speaking, Hawthorne most frequently projects intriguing but finally elusive moral hypotheses. And artistically, with

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TUTOR FOR THE HAUTBOY

INSTRUCTION books for individual wind instruments, as distinct from descriptions and tablatures appearing in encyclopedic treatises on the art and science of music, are comparatively rare before the eighteenth century. If we except Borjon's ' Traite de la musette' (1672), practically the only instruments which received this attention were the recorder and flageolet. The few tutors for these instruments are all well known1, and in view of the present-day interest in recorder music, have all been worked upon. A printed tutor implies an amateur clientele; the professional musician learned his craft by a species of apprenticeship, a direct handing on of tradition by word of mouth and personal lessons from a master. Among the new wind instruments which rose to the forefront in the second half of the seventeenth century none surpassed the hautboy, or oboe, in the esteem of musicians. The popularity of the German or transverse flute notwithstanding, it was to the hautboy as often as not that serious composers turned when they required a soprano wind soloist or a strengthened ripieno line. This is not surprising, for the hautboy set a new standard of musical character in a wind instrument; it had both weight and flexibility of tone in the true soprano range, it could be freely handled in a number of related major and minor tonalities, and above all it was representative of the new subjective and individual style which was slowly permeating instrumental music. The instrument originated in France about I66o, and there are signs that it had reached England by I674.2 Thereafter it went to ground , serving a casual military and civic apprenticeship which is hard to trace until it emerged, fully fledged, in the later works of Henry Purcell. The tutor here described owes its discovery to Dr. Ernst H. Meyer, and to the fact that, in a recent book, he took the trouble to note