Tonal Relations Research Articles

Hexachord Solmization in the Classroom: A Revival of Old Practices

This article proposes the practice of hexachord solmization as a component of a "histor ically informed" theory curriculum for early-music students. Many theory treatises and singing manuals from the sixteenth century and before start with a discussion of the gam ut, hexachords, the Guidonian hand, and solmization syllables. This strongly suggests that hexachord solmization was one of the principles of contemporary music education. Analyses of musical excerpts demonstrate that a hexachord is a meaningful melodic unit rather than a random set of six tones. Its solmization syllables illuminate the inherent tonal relations around the semitone mi–fa ; furthermore, they represent expressive tone qualities in themselves—for instance, the bright mi versus the soft fa. The hexachord sys tem was still in use in eighteenth-century Italy, apart from some adjustments with regard to the emerging major-minor tonality. Most likely, young apprentices at Italian conserv atories learned the syllables before they could read the pitches. Sets of solfeggi produced by the conservatory masters for their pupils show how plain solmization patterns form the basis of the melodic art of the period. In the classroom today, hexachord solmization offers both a useful tool for a non-verbal mode of musical understanding and a starting point for melodic improvisation.

Scientific-Linguistic Framework: Identification of Tonal Relations

This study establishes a scientific-linguistic framework to specify tonal relations in Asian tonal languages. Applied to the empirical data from 21 speakers of Zhangzhou Southern Min, this model derives a linguistically tonetic F0 system for its eight-way tonal contrast. This represents this dialect as an independent variety from the scientific perspective while making it comparable with other tonal varieties and languages for typological and universal purposes. The description has gone beyond the inconsistency and inadequacy of those auditorily-based prior studies and laid out an objective foundation for further theoretical exploration. The exploration is expected to serve as a model to examining those tonal languages that possess complex tonal contrasts not only in China but also in Asia and beyond. It contributes vital linguistic data to the generalization of areal characteristics within the Sino-Tibetan language family, but also to the exploration of cross-linguistic tonal property in world’s natural languages, while enlightening the discussion on why and how human beings employ tone as an important language device in their cognitive activities and decode the competence for communicative purposes.

Uncovering the Stylistic Traits of Romantic Leopoldo Miguéz

Leopoldo Miguéz (1850–1902) was a pioneer of absolute music in Brazil, composing the first Brazilian symphony, symphonic poem, violin sonata, and nocturne. Despite his prominent position in historical accounts of the late-nineteenth century in the country, his music has received little analytical attention to date due to its lack of Brazilian elements. Here I conduct an in-depth examination of Miguéz’s compositional practices and stylistic preferences through a detailed analysis of the thematic material, tonal relations, harmony, and form (Caplin 1998. Hepokoski; Darcy 2006. Hepokoski 2021) of one of his most popular piano works: Allegro Appassionato op. 11 (1883). Miguéz reached the peak of his national popularity during Brazil’s change of regime from monarchy to republic in 1889, and the resulting shift in musical aesthetic preferences from Italian opera and sacred genres to German instrumental music. While Wagner, Liszt, and Zukunftsmusik have long been known as influences on Miguéz’s compositional style, I suggest that Beethoven, Brahms, and the formalist-organicist tradition also permeate his works. The last part of this paper consists of a comparative analysis of analytical findings for the Allegro Appassionato and a group of parameters identified as potential markers of Miguéz’s compositional style: use of proto-themes, mediant regions, roving harmonies, smooth voice leading, and motivic economy.

Musical Experience in the Bower: D. G. Rossetti, Listening, and Space

Abstract This essay traces Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s use of the bower as a visual space in relation to musical subject matter. Following the increasing popularity of instrumental music and musical discourse in the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of art music and its expressive abilities had become a pervasive discourse for painters. Through an examination of Rossetti’s images of bowers with a musical subject – specifically The Blue Bower (1865), Veronica Veronese (1872), and La Ghirlandata (1873) – this essay explores ideas of musical temporality and artistic spatiality, tonal relations between colour and music, and Rossetti’s emphasis on subjective experience in these images. The bower became a crucial feature in this exploration of music and painting, signalling a visual space characterized by ideas of immersion, artistic correspondences, and the abstracting of colour and form. This essay proposes that Rossetti’s bowers were sites of visual immersion for its viewers, alluding and appealing to the sensuous impact music could have on a listener by mimicking listening behaviour in a visual format. My discussion uncovers new contexts for Rossetti’s musical images and draws parallels between listening and viewing behaviour for both the Victorian and current public. The essay concludes that visual sites alluding to music can act as immersive spaces, contending that abstraction and temporality are drawn out in painting by virtue of an appeal to music.

Investigation of Multisensory Harmonic Priming: Audiovisual Integration in Chord Perception

ABSTRACT Although typically thought of as a unimodal phenomenon, musical experience is fundamentally multisensory. The current study examined such multisensory influences by exploring the impact of visual information on the processing of higher-order musical structure, within the context of harmonic expectancy formation. Specifically, musically trained participants experienced four different priming events, including an auditory chord prime, a visual chord prime, an auditory-visual note/chord prime, and an auditory note prime, and discriminated harmonically related versus unrelated in-tune and out-of-tune target chords. Analyses of reactions and error rates revealed typical harmonic priming effects (i.e., faster reaction times and lower error rates to related than unrelated targets for in-tune chords) for auditory chord and auditory-visual note/chord primes, but no differences for visual chord and auditory note primes. The finding that auditory-visual note/chord primes led to priming indicates that visual information can induce auditory expectancies when supported by auditory cue information. These results are discussed within the context of models of tonal relations, as well as in relation to theories of multisensory processing in general.

Dissociação entre forma e estrutura harmônica em obras de Claude Debussy e Igor Stravinsky

Nesse artigo apresentamos análises do Prelúdio X, Livro II, intitulado Canope, de Claude Debussy e da Introdução à primeira parte do balé A Sagração da Primavera de Igor Stravinsky. Nosso trabalho enfoca o conteúdo harmônico destas peças que são interpretadas através de métodos tradicionais de análise harmônica tonal, como o detalhado por Walter Piston em seu livro Harmony, bem como sob a luz de técnicas de organização de alturas comuns aos compositores das vertentes estéticas estudadas, como as compiladas por Stefan Kostka e Matthew Santa. Nossos resultados mostram como essas obras, provenientes da produção de compositores de estéticas e gerações distintas, compartilham uma mesma caraterística: a dissociação entre a forma e a estrutura harmônica. Em ambos os casos, embora como resultantes de procedimentos distintos de organização harmônica, encontramos um plano organizacional subjacente inspirado no sistema tonal que subsidia a criação de uma harmonia sem traços perceptíveis de relações tonais.

НАВЧАННЯ СТУДЕНТІВ-ХУДОЖНИКІВ ТЕХНІКИ СУХОЇ ПАСТЕЛІ В ПРОЦЕСІ ПЛЕНЕРНОЇ ПРАКТИКИ

The basis for the study was the need to find the new methodological tools for professional training of future teachers of fine arts in higher education institutions of Ukraine. This is due to the modernization of the content of domestic education and the demand for the modern labour market, which awaits a well-informed and practically trained specialist.The scientific publication highlights the methodological aspects of teaching the pastel techniques of students of art and pedagogical institutions of higher education. The importance of the educational and creative plein air practice in the system of professional training of future teachers of fine arts is singled out. The advantages of using the pastel techniques when performing landscapes in natural conditions are given.Such basic technical methods of training as hatching which is divided into set of receptions are considered, the most popular of them are a linear bar, a cross bar, a contour bar; mixing pastels, which involves rubbing, stewing, washing, spraying, smoothing, shading techniques, side stewing; binding (fixation method); pen (retouching), dry washing, wet brush, or “scrubbing”, otherwise meaning “hlizal”.The article describes the step-by-step work of performing a landscape composition in the technique of “dry pastel” from nature in the open air, where the students gain the necessary experience of active and fast artistic work, trying to reflect in their works a certain mood of the landscape in different weather conditions or changing nature at different times.The methodologically competent stages are singled out in nature work, namely: composition of the general composition, construction of the whole image, revealing of big colour and tonal relations, their specification and coordination among themselves, completion and generalization of all work. A system of educational tasks in pastel technique is proposed to deepen the practical skills of students-artists, which involves the implementation of various types of work: sketches from nature, short sketches, long sketches, and the final composition.The technical methods and techniques discussed in the article can be used in order to increase the effectiveness of teaching the students the art of pastel techniques and enhance their creative abilities.

Использование форм взаимообучения студентов на занятиях по дисциплине «Рисунок и живопись»

The artical is devoted to the current psychological and pedagogical problem of searching for effective forms of mutual training of students in drawing and painting. The problem requires theoretical justification and practical development. It considers the theoretical foundations of the organization of mutual learning of students, as well as describes a psychological and pedagogical experiment to identify the effectiveness of using in various forms of mutual learning in the process of studying the discipline “Drawing and Painting” by students. The following effective forms of mutual learning are offered: a joint individual form, a joint and consistent form, a joint and interacting form. In addition, the importance of the use of electronic learning tools such as: interactive animation, electronic presentations, interactive technological instructions is indicated. Along with the theoretical justification of the possibilities and necessity of using the above forms of mutual learning of students in the classroom, the article suggests specific practical methods of organizing training assistance by students advisers. As part of providing training assistance by students advisers positive impact of presentations, demonstration of presentations, interactive animation was indicated. During the practical classes they used the developed interactive technological instructions. The effectiveness of the considered publication of forms and methods of mutual learning of students is presented in the description of psychological and pedagogical experiment. The results of this experiment are expressed in diagrams and theoretical conclusions. At the same time, the stages of the experiment are described in detail: diagnostic, ascertaining, forming, control and evaluation, indicating the criteria for analyzing the creative work of students. The main criteria are presented such as: literacy of compositional construction; constructional drawing; a coloristic solution; transmission of tonal relations; creation of an artistic image by picturesque means. The effectiveness of the application of these forms of mutual learning of students is justified in describing the test and evaluation stage of the experiment and the conclusions of psychological and pedagogical research.

Diatonic and Chromatic Tonicization in Rock Music

This article establishes an expanded theory of tonicization for harmonic progressions in rock music. While previous discussions of tonicization have largely focused on the role of the V chord, this theory allows for a much larger number of tonicizing chords, which may articulate important tonal events such as prolongations and cadences. Using diatonic position finding to aid the analyst in determining a chord’s status, the article offers five preference factors to identify the most likely triadic tonicizers. This leads to some general conclusions regarding tonicizing chords, modality, chord succession, and harmonic function. In demonstrating these concepts, four categories of tonicization are illustrated: primary diatonic, in which a tonicization employs only diatonic chords of the mode; primary chromatic, which occurs due to chromatic inflection or modal borrowing; secondary chromatic, in which a secondary triad is tonicized by a chromatic chord; and secondary diatonic, whereby a hierarchical relationship is established between relative tonics. The article concludes with an analysis of Neil Young’s “Down by the River” (1969), demonstrating how the concepts discussed can clarify large-scale tonal relations.

ЦВЕТОПИСЬ КАК ОСОБЕННОСТЬ РАБОТЫ С ЭКРАНИЗИРУЕМЫМ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННЫМ ТЕКСТОМ Ф. М. ДОСТОЕВСКОГО, А. П. ПЛАТОНОВА, И. С. ШМЕЛЕВА (НА ПРИМЕРЕ МУЛЬТИПЛИКАЦИОННЫХ РАБОТ А. К. ПЕТРОВА)

The article examines the colouristic peculiarities of F. M. Dostoevsky’s, A. P. Platonov’s, I. S. Shmelyov’s fiction in the context of the animated versions created by the director A. K. Petrov. The paper reveals the relation between the chromatic markers of the original text and their subsequent visualization, identifies the basic means of colour reproduction. The author analyses semantically complicated colour symbolism of the animated versions of classical literary works, which establishes hyper-textual relations both with the original works and with the general cultural and historical context. The researcher considers the psychological peculiarities of the recipient’s perception of colour, light and tonal relations. By the example of the animated cartoons “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, “The Cow” and “My Love” the author examines colour symbolism as one of the basic peculiarities of the literary work visualization, which is a necessary element to compress the verbal information of the visualized text.

Schubert’s Development of Harmonic Motives in his Early String Quartets

This essay looks at Schubert’s handling of harmonic motives in the first movements of four of his early string quartets dating from the period of approximately 1811 until late 1814, when he was fourteen to seventeen years old. Despite their many structural problems, these pieces provide an insight into Schubert’s development as a composer of sonata form. Even in the earliest of the examples studied, the young composer attempts to draw affective and structural consequences across the form from the first harmonic event of the music, which thus functions motivically in the unfolding of the movement. As his approach becomes increasingly flexible over the period under discussion, such harmonic motives become a dynamic force in the form, influencing tonal relations and modulatory strategies as well as looking forward to certain aspects of his mature three-key expositions.

Modeling Temporal Tonal Relations in Polyphonic Music Through Deep Networks With a Novel Image-Based Representation

We propose an end-to-end approach for modeling polyphonic music with a novel graphical representation, based on music theory, in a deep neural network. Despite the success of deep learning in various applications, it remains a challenge to incorporate existing domain knowledge in a network without affecting its training routines. In this paper we present a novel approach for predictive music modeling and music generation that incorporates domain knowledge in its representation. In this work, music is transformed into a 2D representation, inspired by tonnetz from music theory, which graphically encodes musical relationships between pitches. This representation is incorporated in a deep network structure consisting of multilayered convolutional neural networks (CNN, for learning an efficient abstract encoding of the representation) and recurrent neural networks with long short-term memory cells (LSTM, for capturing temporal dependencies in music sequences). We empirically evaluate the nature and the effectiveness of the network by using a dataset of classical music from various composers. We investigate the effect of parameters including the number of convolution feature maps, pooling strategies, and three configurations of the network: LSTM without CNN, LSTM with CNN (pre-trained vs. not pre-trained). Visualizations of the feature maps and filters in the CNN are explored, and a comparison is made between the proposed tonnetz-inspired representation and pianoroll, a commonly used representation of music in computational systems. Experimental results show that the tonnetz representation produces musical sequences that are more tonally stable and contain more repeated patterns than sequences generated by pianoroll-based models, a finding that is directly useful for tackling current challenges in music and AI such as smart music generation.

Familiar Tonal Context Improves Accuracy of Pitch Interval Perception.

A fundamental feature of everyday music perception is sensitivity to familiar tonal structures such as musical keys. Many studies have suggested that a tonal context can enhance the perception and representation of pitch. Most of these studies have measured response time, which may reflect expectancy as opposed to perceptual accuracy. We instead used a performance-based measure, comparing participants’ ability to discriminate between a “small, in-tune” interval and a “large, mistuned” interval in conditions that involved familiar tonal relations (diatonic, or major, scale notes), unfamiliar tonal relations (whole-tone or mistuned-diatonic scale notes), repetition of a single pitch, or no tonal context. The context was established with a brief sequence of tones in Experiment 1 (melodic context), and a cadence-like two-chord progression in Experiment 2 (harmonic context). In both experiments, performance significantly differed across the context conditions, with a diatonic context providing a significant advantage over no context; however, no correlation with years of musical training was observed. The diatonic tonal context also provided an advantage over the whole-tone scale context condition in Experiment 1 (melodic context), and over the mistuned scale or repetition context conditions in Experiment 2 (harmonic context). However, the relatively small benefit to performance suggests that the main advantage of tonal context may be priming of expected stimuli, rather than enhanced accuracy of pitch interval representation.

Predicting tonal realizations in one Chinese dialect from another

Pronunciation dictionaries are usually expensive and time-consuming to prepare for the computational modeling of human languages, especially when the target language is under-resourced. Northern Chinese dialects are often under-resourced but used by a significant number of speakers. They share the basic sound inventories with Standard Chinese (SC). Also, their words usually share the segmental realizations and logographic written forms with the SC translation equivalents. Hence the pronunciation dictionaries of northern Chinese dialects could be easily available if we were able to predict the tonal realizations of the dialect words from the tonal information of their SC counterparts. This paper applies statistical modeling to investigate the tonal aspect of the related words between a northern dialect, i.e. Jinan Mandarin (JM), and Standard Chinese (SC). Multi-linear regression models were built with between-word pitch distance of JM words as the dependent variable and the following were included as the predictors: SC tonal relations, between-dialect tonal identity, and individual backgrounds. The results showed that tonal relations in SC and between-dialect identity, as predictors featuring the relation between the JM and SC tonal systems, are significant and robust predictors of JM tonal realizations. The speakers’ sociolinguistic and cognitive backgrounds, together with the tonal merge and neutral tone information within JM, are important for the prediction of JM tonal realizations and affect the way that between-language predictors take effect.

Theoretical Proposals on How Vertical Harmony May Convey Nostalgia and Longing in Music

Music is often associated with the emotions of nostalgia and longing. According to previous survey studies both nostalgia and longing are among the most commonly evoked emotions by music (Juslin, 2011). Despite nostalgia’s significance as a musical emotion, research on the specific properties of music that might contribute to this particular emotion has been scarce. A recent empirical experiment by Lahdelma and Eerola (2014) sought to explore whether single chords could be effective at conveying musical emotions to listeners, which spanned complex emotions such as nostalgia. According to the results single chords such as the minor triad, the minor seventh and the major seventh communicate the emotion of nostalgia effectively. The aim of the current paper is to raise several possible explanations that might account for single chords’ ability to convey the emotion of nostalgia. In these explanations we consider cultural, music-theoretical and psychoacoustic issues, as well as their possible interactions. The three proposed candidate explanations are (1) learning, (2) intrinsic emotional connotations arising from tonal relations, and (3) clashing conventions arising from concurrent yet separate affective associations, stemming from certain triad and interval combinations. Finally, we propose experimental designs for future research to empirically test these explanations.

PANTONALITY GENERALISED: BEN JOHNSTON'S ARTISTIC RESEARCHES IN EXTENDED JUST INTONATION

AbstractThis article explores the use of innovatory tonal relations in the music of the American composer Ben Johnston (b. 1926). Johnston's use of a microtonal tuning system employing scales and intervals in extended just intonation is described, and passages from several of his compositions (especially String Quartets nos 2 and 5) are analysed to show the use of these pitch resources in practice. The article also situates Johnston's contribution in the context of older theories of harmony and the mechanics of pitch perception.

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.

Influence of tonal and temporal expectations on chord processing and on completion judgments of chord sequences

Pitch and time are two principal form-bearing dimensions in Western tonal music. Research on melody perception has shown that listeners develop expectations about "What" note is coming next and "When" in time it will occur. Our study used sequences of chords (i.e., simultaneously sounding notes) to investigate the influence of these expectations on chord processing (Experiments 1 and 4) and subjective judgments of completion (Experiments 2 and 3). Both tasks showed an influence of tonal relations and temporal regularities: expected events occurring at the expected moment were processed faster and led to higher completion judgments. However, pitch and time dimensions interacted only for completion judgments. The present outcome suggests that for chord perception the influence of pitch and time might depend on the required processing: with a more global judgment favoring interactive influences in contrast to a task focusing on local chord processing.

從《廣雅疏證》看王念孫的聲義相通説

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 王念孫《廣雅疏證•序》云：“訓話之旨，本於聲音。”書中每以聲義相通來疏解古義。近世學者，對王氏所言“某與某通”的語言成分、聲音關係，以及王氏聲義相通説，論之未深。本文就全書聲義相通的文例進行分析，闡釋其中所用術語，指出聲義相通的字，除通假字外，尚包括同源字和異體字。其次，本文考察不同術語所言相通字例，均屬音同或音近，並列表作出統計。第三是尋找王氏論定通用字的依據。最後對王氏聲義相通説的得失，作出評價，以補前人研究的不足。 In his introduction to Kuang-ya Shu-cheng, Wang Nien-sun notes that "the essence of meaning is lodged in the sound". In interpreting ancient meaning, Kuang-ya Shu-cheng usually takes different phonetics that convey the same meaning as interchangeable. In recent studies, not much has been written on the linguistic components and the tonal relations concerning Wang's interchangeable theory, and there still awaits an in-depth analysis of his theory of the interdependence of sound and meaning. This paper provides a throughout analysis of examples concerning the interdependence of sound and meaning in Kuang-ya Shu-cheng. This paper (1) explains the special terms used in the work, showing that characters of different sound but conveying the same meaning include not only loan characters (t'ung-chia tzu 通假字) but also cognate words (t'ung-yuan tzu 同源字) and variants (yi-t'i tzu 異體字). (2) provides statistical tables in support of the point that examples of interchangeable characters mentioned by various special terms are in fact homophones or near homophones. (3) examines the rationale behind Wang's discussion of loan characters. (4) evaluates Wang's theory of the interdependence of sound and meaning, so as to serve as a supplement to existing research.

As Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert

been grateful to a dull description that faithfully guides me to the places where great artistic experiences await.' So rhapsodized Donald Francis Tovey at the end of his 1928 essay entitled Tonality--later reprinted as Tonality in Schubert-in response to his own description of the D-minor passage preceding the recapitulation of the first movement of the BPMajor Piano Sonata, D. 960, of 1828. Although we will gaze on this music in due time, our telescope first takes the measure of Tovey's metaphor, which is striking for reasons that Tovey probably did not intend. The traditional metaphorical source for tonal relations is the ola system, where positions are determined relative to a central unifying element.2 A star cluster evokes a network of elements and rela-