Single Melody Research Articles

Automatic Encoding of Polyphonic Melodies in Musicians and Nonmusicians

In music, multiple musical objects often overlap in time. Western polyphonic music contains multiple simultaneous melodic lines (referred to as "voices") of equal importance. Previous electrophysiological studies have shown that pitch changes in a single melody are automatically encoded in memory traces, as indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN) and its magnetic counterpart (MMNm), and that this encoding process is enhanced by musical experience. In the present study, we examined whether two simultaneous melodies in polyphonic music are represented as separate entities in the auditory memory trace. Musicians and untrained controls were tested in both magnetoencephalogram and behavioral sessions. Polyphonic stimuli were created by combining two melodies (A and B), each consisting of the same five notes but in a different order. Melody A was in the high voice and Melody B in the low voice in one condition, and this was reversed in the other condition. On 50% of trials, a deviant final (5th) note was played either in the high or in the low voice, and it either went outside the key of the melody or remained within the key. These four deviations occurred with equal probability of 12.5% each. Clear MMNm was obtained for most changes in both groups, despite the 50% deviance level, with a larger amplitude in musicians than in controls. The response pattern was consistent across groups, with larger MMNm for deviants in the high voice than in the low voice, and larger MMNm for in-key than out-of-key changes, despite better behavioral performance for out-of-key changes. The results suggest that melodic information in each voice in polyphonic music is encoded in the sensory memory trace, that the higher voice is more salient than the lower, and that tonality may be processed primarily at cognitive stages subsequent to MMN generation.

Automatic composition of music by means of grammatical evolution

This work describes how grammatical evolution may be applied to the domain of automatic composition. Our goal is to test this technique as an alternate tool for automatic composition. The AP440 auxiliary processor will be used to play music, thus we shall use a grammar that generates AP440 melodies. Grammar evolution will use fitness functions defined from several well-known single melodies to automatically generate AP440 compositions that are expected to sound like those composed by human musicians.

Detection of Implied Harmony Changes in Triadic Melodies

Three experiments investigated the cues used by musicians and nonmusicians asked to rate their confidence that an implied harmony change had or had not occurred at a specified point in pseudo- randomly generated, isochronous, triadic melodies that conformed to the rules of elementary classical harmony. In the first experiment, a single melody note followed the putative point of harmony change, and subjects' responses were predictable on the basis of whether this note was contained in the previous triad and the size of the melodic interval between this note and the one preceding it. Musicians were relatively more influenced by the former factor, and nonmusicians, by the latter one. In the second experiment, five to seven melody notes followed the putative point of harmony change, which greatly reduced control by the harmonic relationship of the first of these to the previous triad, but the effect of melodic interval size persisted. The third experiment verified the findings of the first two by using the cues that had been identified in them as design variables and evaluating their effect with conventional analytic statistics. This experiment also parametrically manipulated the number of notes after the putative point of harmony change and showed that maximum confidence concerning the occurrence of an implied harmony change was reached with the first note that did not belong to the previous triad. Possible mechanisms for use of these cues to implied harmony changes are discussed, and directions for future research are indicated.

Consonant assimilation in Arabic: An autosegmental perspective

This study gives a formal autosegmental account to both partial and complete assimilation processes in Arabic. Unlike Hayes (1986b), where only partial assimilation involves the decomposition of the melodic tier into a main and a peripheral tier, a unified analysis is given here where both partial and complete assimilation processes are accounted for by the same mechanism that involves tier decomposition. Hence, the partial-complete distinction is not significant at the initial stages of the derivation. The distinction is later made between the rules which result in geminate consonant clusters and those which do not. The question of whether or not the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) should be enforced on the resulting geminate clusters is then discussed. It is shown that the OCP must be enforced, not only to collapse identical melodies into doubly-linked single melodies, but also to block the derivation of triply-linked structures representing overlong segments which are banned in Arabic by a global constraint on phonological rules.

Modal and Motivic Coherence in the Music of the Fleury Play Book

The Music of the Medieval Church Dramas by the late William L. Smoldon, published in 1980 six years after the author's death, brought to light scores of melodies from liturgical dramas, including many from the so-called Fleury Play Book, Orleans, Bibliotheque de la Ville, MS. 201.1 Although Smoldon in this publication has transcribed certain melodies, his purpose was not to become too involved with melodic analysis; hence our understanding of this repertory's musical excellence still requires additional scholarly attention. However, when we direct our energy toward what Walther Lipphardt called unity2 we can, through modal and motivic analysis, expose these slimly explored facets of the plays' music, and we can also provide bases for comparing musical effects of other manuscripts. Indeed, Lipphardt's understanding of tonale Einheit is reasonable, since entire series of antiphons maintaining a single mode are to be found in chant repertories. 3 John Stevens pertinently remarks that in the Fleury Visitatio the mode is retained up to scene changes, while the Tres Filiae maintains a single melody throughout. 4 How many other modal and motivic continua are to be found in the remaining St. Nicholas and Temporale tetralogies and biblical miracles associated with St. Paul and Lazarus in the Fleury Play Book? To launch this investigation, some preliminaries relative to the technical and terminological frameworks of medieval music may prove useful. For the transcriptions in the examples which I present, I adopt the system of notation used by F. A. Gevaert in his study of modal melodies in the tenth-century chant catalog,

Spatial stream segregation

When the tones of a slow (e.g., 1 tone/s) tone sequence alternate between widely placed speakers, observers report hearing a single melody which moves back and forth between the speakers like a pingpong game. When the same sequence is presented more rapidly (e.g., 8 tones/s), observers report hearing two independent melodies or streams, one from each speaker (Spatial Stream Segregation). At intermediate speeds the sequence can be heard in either fashion depending upon attentional biases and other factors. Subjects are poor at discriminating between two rapid tone sequences when the tones alternate between widely placed speakers and the discrimination depends upon appreciating the temporal order of the tones across speakers; but they are good at the discrimination when all of the tones come from a single speaker. Thus, Spatial Stream Segregation impairs across‐stream temporal order judgments. All of these observations are analogous to the phenomenon of Primary Auditory Stream Segregation [A. S. Bregman and J. Campbell, J. Exp. Psychol. 89, 244–249 (1971)] where the tones are widely separated in pitch range instead of in space.

Shrewsbury School, Manuscript VI: A Medieval Part Book?

The manuscript Shrewsbury School VI (formerly Mus. iii. 42), an English liturgical book of the early 15th century, includes texts and music for processions, Passions and plays, some of which may have originated in the late 14th century. It has the format and liturgical order of a small service book such as a processional, but contains single mensural melodies rather than the plainsong melodies usually associated with the texts. Previous studies of the manuscript have concentrated on the plays; besides neglecting the rest of the manuscript as a source of further information about the plays, they have ignored the importance of this source as a collection of English liturgical ritual music. Because of the unique nature of the manuscript, many questions arise besides the usual problems of date and provenance, principally because some or all of the music may not have been monophonic as the extant material suggests, but polyphonic.

Hrotsvitha and Music

Research Article| September 01 1948 Hrotsvitha and Music Bernard Stambler Bernard Stambler Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Bulletin of the American Musicological Society (1948) 11-13: 53–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/829288 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Bernard Stambler; Hrotsvitha and Music. Bulletin of the American Musicological Society 1 September 1948; 11-13 53–54. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/829288 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search This content is only available via PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

THE MUSIC OF WILLIAM SCHUMAN

ON A WINTRY AFTERNOON a few years ago two middle-aged ladies sat in a train speeding from Philadelphia to New York, discussing the concert they had just heard. Baffled by the new American symphony on the program, they consulted a Philadelphia newspaper to see what a musical authority had thought about the performance of the preceding evening. The authority in question thought very little of the work, and the two ladies solemnly agreed that he was quite right. Whereupon a young man seated behind them said, What would you think if you read this review? and handed them another paper, in which the symphony was highly praised. He then introduced himself as William Schuman, the author of the composition. When the ladies had recovered from the shock of meeting a live composer of symphonies, an animated conversation ensued. One of them plucked up enough courage to ask, Why is it that you modern composers never write a melody? Schuman replied, My music is all melody. Can you sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner'? Then I guarantee to teach you to sing the principal melody of my symphony in half an hour. He was not exaggerating. Despite its frequent irregularity and use of intervals commonly regarded as angular, his melody is allpervasive and basically vocal. And, like the other elements of his style, it is intensely individual and characteristic. In slow sections it tends to be long-the whole 52-measure introduction of the Third String Quartet, for example, is actually a single melody. But even where it is of a more conventional length, it is far from conventional in other respects. Turn for a moment to Example 8A, the passacaglia theme of the Third Symphony. We shall see later what riches are derived from this line. Suffice it to say here that the opening leap of an octave and especially the frequent skips of a fourth, the presence of a climax-tone, and the implied harmonic ambiguity are typical traits. The rapid melodies are sometimes long-the main theme of the finale of the Symphony for Strings, for example, is 22 measures long (see Ex. 9)-but more often short; and occasionally a whole movement or even a whole work is based on a single phrase: I7