This essay presents a theory of musical and verbal double entendre inspired by and applicable to the late-period music of Milton Babbi . Rather than assuming the appropriateness of any single method (which might tend toward singularity of meaning), a number of approaches are applied to three late works: primarily his Whirled Series (1987), and secondarily his Canonical Form (1983) and Gloss on ’Round

Non-isochronous (NI) metres (cf. additive metres) have an importance to metrical theory that belies their relative rarity in the Western art music tradition, and need always to be considered in general theoretical discussions. This paper focuses on a particular form of NI metre, the North Indian rupak tal. Rupak tal is described as comprising 7 matras (‘beats’), divided 322. It has a distinctive drum

[1] The Beatles’ recording sessions leading to the release of Abbey Road in 1969 were the last in which all four Beatles participated. The eleventh studio album by the Beatles, Abbey Road has been recognized as an artistic highpoint in the Beatles’ oeuvre that retrospectively looked back at formative popular music styles while also innovating in new dimensions of songwriting, performance, and recording

This paper investigates harmonic progressions built around two major chords and one minor chord, all related by step. In many pop/rock songs, these chords can be analyzed as Aeolian progressions—VI, VII, and i—(Moore 1992; Biamonte 2010; Richards 2017a). Recent songs by Bon Iver, The Chainsmokers, and others, however, use chord loops where the harmonies can be interpreted as IV, V, and vi, which I

In this paper, I use Rameau’s contradictions as a basis for my defense of the règle de l’octave. I also challenge certain misconceptions about the règle in current scholarly literature, notably its alleged harmonic incompleteness and stepwise motion requirement, while asserting some of its rarely discussed uses and properties. DOI: 10.30535/mto.25.4.5 Volume 25, Number 4, December 2019 Copyright ©

In the academic study of Wayne Shorter’s compositions, so far most of the attention has been dedicated to the harmony in pieces from the 1950s and ’60s. In this article, I will analyze three compositions dating from 1964 and 1965, “E.S.P.,” “Infant Eyes,” and “Virgo,” while taking a more holistic approach. I examine all musical parameters and demonstrate there exists a great interdependency and entwinement

Ravel’s Concerto in G Major reveals a new priority for timbre, long an integral part of his compositional toolkit, in which timbre functions as a form-bearing accent that marks and transforms themes. Through his unconventional treatment of symphonic instruments and the piano within reinvented concepts of theme, key, and form, I argue that these “novel” sonorities are not just there for surface reasons

This article analyzes the pitch language of Tune-Yards. Like many of its peers, Tune-Yards uses chromaticism to differentiate itself from the mainstream. Unlike its fellow post-millennial experimental pop bands, however, Tune-Yards primarily favors loop-derived compositional techniques that generate chromatic clashes between two or more musical layers. Tune-Yards is also noteworthy for the pervasiveness

[1] The tango, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges argued, contains a secret. “Musical dictionaries provide a brief, adequate, and generally approved definition,” Borges wrote, but “the French or Spanish composer who, trusting the definition, correctly crafts a ‘tango,’ discovers, very much to his surprise, that he has crafted something that our ears do not recognize, that our memory does not welcome

This article provides a detailed method for analyzing smoothness in the seams between musical modules in video games. Video game music is comprised of distinct modules that are triggered during gameplay to yield the real-time soundtracks that accompany players’ diverse experiences with a given game. Smoothness —a quality in which two convergent musical modules fit well together—as well as the opposite

This article examines three improvisations by the Miles Davis Quintet from their recording The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 through the lens of a new theory of musical interaction. It shows how the quintet favored divergent over convergent interactional strategies in the interpersonal, referent, role, and style domains in its quest to create what one band member called “anti-music.” Volume

Filtered Point-Symmetry (FiPS) is a tool for modeling relationships between iterated maximally even sets. Common musical relationships can be studied by using FiPS to model chords contained within a specific scalar context (such as C major or the 01-octatonic collection), and by capturing those relationships in a FiPS configuration space. In this work, many FiPS configuration spaces are presented;

The theory of Uniform Information Density states that communication is optimal when information is presented at a moderate and uniform rate. Three predictions follow for music: (1) low-probability events should be longer in duration than high-probability events; (2) lowprobability events should be juxtaposed with high-probability events; (3) an event that is low in probability in one dimension should

The best-known track on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Bu erfly, “Alright” has come to be regarded as a protest anthem, fueled by Lamar’s charged performances of the song at the BET Awards and the Grammys, and by accolades from the press that cite its political importance. This article argues that the actual musical track is ambiguous and open to several interpretations. To support this idea, I first explore

After twenty years of published analyses on rap lyrics and flow, a divide between music-oriented and literature-oriented writing remains. It is only slightly hyperbolic to suggest that the former analyzes rap music as music without text while the la er analyzes it as text without music. This article begins bridging that divide by relating details of Kendrick Lamar’s rhythmic delivery to the meaning

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Bu erfly offers core music theory instructors many opportunities: to engage with popular music in a curriculum traditionally focused on art music, to discuss theoretical topics not usually considered in the music theory core (including flow, groove, meter and rhythm), and to diversify the range of composer identities included in classroom repertoire. The album’s focus on

Through a transformational analysis of Boulez’s Éclat, this article extends previous understanding of Boulez’s compositional techniques by addressing issues of middleground structure and perception. Presenting a new perspective on this pivotal work, it also sheds light on the development of Boulez’s compositional style. Volume 25, Number 1, May 2019 Copyright © 2019 Society for Music Theory [1] Incorporating

In this article, I theorize a new conception of musical meaning, based on J. L. Austin’s theory of performative u erances in his treatise How to Do Things with Words. Austin theorizes language meaning pragmatically: he highlights the manifold ways language performs actions and is used to “do things” in praxis. Austin thereby suggests a new theoretic center for language meaning, an implication largely

Scholars often assume that there is li le more to say about punk music other than it is fast, loud, abrasive, and any amateur can perform it. Yet within the punk scene, there is a robust discourse on punk musical style and the changes it has undergone throughout its now forty-year history, seemingly endless subgenre distinctions, and critical commentary on the musical merits of individual bands. This

Contrapuncti 8 and 11 from Bach's Art of Fugue demonstrate triple fugal writing in three and four parts respectively. Contrapunctus 11 employs the original and inverted forms of the three subjects used in Contrapunctus 8. This paper investigates specific contrapuntal techniques used by Bach to articulate the sectional designs of each contrapunctus and to identify combinations of particular structural

This article seeks to define tonality as an interaction between different levels of structure in terms of a conjunction of intervallic distance, polarization, modal direction, and voice leading of the harmonic progressions. Intervallic distances depend on the modal direction of transformations as well as on polarization on the circle of fifths in any hierarchy level. Voice leading creates pitch spaces

The theory of harmonic vectors (THV) rests on the hypothesis that tonal functions result from root progressions, not the reverse: it is a transformational theory of the tonal harmonic process. The article discusses three interconnected constraints: the asymmetry of progressions, their limitation to the diatonic span, and the affirmation of the tonic.

Agency is a concept employed widely and in varied ways across interdisciplinary music studies, from the philosophical to the experimental scientific. This article explores some of the theories and methodologies that inform such perspectives, bringing them into conversation with one another. It begins with a conceptual summary juxtaposing the accounts of musical agency that different fields employ and

In this paper, I apply theories of metric cognition, especially Justin London’s theory of meter as entrainment behavior (2012), to analysis of form in the first section of Vortex Temporum I (Rehearsal numbers 1–37). I analyze this section in terms of listeners’ evolving entrainment responses to its meters, finding that the first section outlines a changing relationship with meter from subconscious

Adapting the vivid programmatic music of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (1936) into an animated film could have been a straightforward process, yet the earliest animated versions took significant artistic liberties with Prokofiev’s symphonic tale, projecting vastly different interpretations of the story. Walt Disney produced the first animation in 1946 in an anthology of shorts released to theaters

[1.1] In honor of Prokofiev’s 125th anniversary in 2016, I directed the Symposium on Prokofiev and the Russian Tradition at the College of Music & Dramatic Arts, Louisiana State University (LSU). The Symposium took place February 25–27, 2016, with scholars and delegates from a dozen countries, including Russia, Belgium, Scotland, and Japan. The Symposium featured thirty-six scholarly presentations

The article examines Prokofiev’s compositional oeuvre through the lens of the RimskyKorsakov scale (octatonic collection) and its prominence in selected works from 1915 through 1941. Although he never took a composition lesson with Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev’s careful use of the collection shows his intimate knowledge of the scale. The article seeks to add a understanding of the development of the

In this essay I explore the use of musical mimesis in the score for D. W. Griffith’s 1921 film Orphans of the Storm. I demonstrate that the score, created by Louis F. Go schalk and William Frederick Peters, offers coherence through the use of central themes and the employment of several characteristic leitmotivs; provides recognizable musical characterizations of emotions and physical phenomena, establishing

Charlie Parker has been much appreciated as an improviser, but he was also an important jazz composer, a topic yet to be studied in depth. Parker’s compositions offer insight into his total musicianship as well as provide a summary of early bebop style. Because he left no working manuscripts, we cannot examine his compositions evolving on paper. We do possess occasional single parts for trumpet or

This paper explores relationships between musical and balletic structure in Balanchine’s choreographies of Tchaikovsky’s op. 48 Serenade and Stravinsky’s Orpheus. It demonstrates how movement in music (phrase shapes, melodic directions) and movement in ballet (in individuals and in the corps de ballet) may respond to one another, especially in how each art form follows and alters its own conventions

: Because of their novel harmonic and formal tendencies, Bruckner’s symphonies are often subjected to extravagant analytical practices. Schenker, himself a Bruckner student, viewed them as sublime, but ultimately unworkable, harmonic jumbles: “a potpourri of exaltations.” Darcy has argued that Bruckner’s second themes are largely presented in the “wrong” key, creating a nontraditional “suspension field

Balinese composer Dewa Alit (b. 1973) splits his time between home and abroad, absorbing many kinds of music. His latest gamelan work (2016) is Ngejuk Memedi, from the Balinese ngejuk, to chase, and memedi, a feared phantom of the Balinese unseen world that takes human form. It animates his evolving desire for a “broader conception of what gamelan is, one based on its relationship to other cultures”

In 1917, Max Weber (paraphrasing Schiller) famously proclaimed modernity’s “disenchantment of the world.” Weber was speaking specifically about the waning of belief in the cold light of science, secularism, and rationalized, bureaucratic capitalism, but his dictum has proven remarkably resonant beyond the social science quad. Indeed, disenchantment in various forms arguably pervades the postmodern

The compositional process behind the iconic Tallis forty-part motet, Spem in alium (ca. 1570) remains an enigma. Did he really check every pair of voices for illegal parallels? The author proposes a scenario based on Thomas Campion’s “Rule” for connecting notes in three voices above a bass. This very clever system ensures the presence of all three interval-classes above the bass (third, fifth, and

[1] The idea that harmony in contemporary Anglo-American popular music operates via a system (or systems) fundamentally distinct from common-practice tonality has been around for a while (Moore 1992; Stephenson 2002; Everett 2004) and has spurred scholars to retool traditional analytical techniques (Burns 2008; Capuzzo 2009; Nobile 2014). But what if we were to build a theory of harmony for popular

In this article, I argue that tonality itself often functions as a topic in early twentiethcentury modernist music. Tonal figurae gain markedness while compositional practices simultaneously fracture and flourish after 1900, opening a diverse network of significations and meanings. To account for this variegated musical world, I a(empt to broaden and extend topic theory’s orbit by deploying two types

[1] The study of contrapuntal pa.erns and their diminutions was a common thread among historical music pedagogies. Medieval and Renaissance musicians learned counterpoint by memorizing intervallic combinations and internalizing surface pa.erns (Busse Berger 2005). The partimento “rules,” or pa.erns, of the eighteenth century (such as Francesco Durante’s “when the partimento ascends by half step, it

This article explores gradual hypermetrical shifts, or hypermetrical transitions, in imitative contexts. The concept of hypermetrical transition, introduced by David Temperley, presupposes metrical conflict in the course of the transition. My principal goal is to place imitative metrical conflicts in the context of Schenkerian theory and to propose that each imitative part may suggest its own middleground

[1] Yayoi Uno Evere ’s Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera (hereafter RMNCO), a recent addition to Indiana University Press’s popular Musical Meaning and Interpretation series, demonstrates the theoretical and analytical potential within contemporary opera. Expanding upon Abbate 1991, Evere adapts work on musical narrative and semiotics (such as Almén 2008) to explore various productions

Through a case study of recordings of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, I argue that enlisting Deleuzian concepts when analyzing multiple performances of the same piece is useful for the exploration of individual differences and practices of performance. Such analysis reveals a continuously shifting-transforming performance style and provides a rich tapestry of diversity within and across

Since the founding of the Society for Music Theory in 1977, the Anglophone music theory discipline has extensively diversified, now encompassing manifold subfields. A pertinent question arises: how does the music theory discipline balance this diversity with a sense of unity and cohesiveness? An investigation into journal articles—one of the main ways music theory presents itself to the world—can serve

This article is a study of the ways in which collaboration is signaled in the delivery of rap lyrics. I begin by describing the importance and prevalence of unified flow in music released by rap groups during the genre’s formative period in the 1980s and early 1990s. I follow this with a discussion of the continued importance of unified flow in tracks released by solo artists featuring guest rappers—a

In this study, I evaluate the sonic possibilities of John Cage’s Four2 (1990) by comparing existing performances of the piece with alternate renditions generated computationally and by hand specifically for this analysis. Four2, one of Cage’s Number Pieces, is fully determinate with respect to pitch, instrumentation and overall duration, but affords the performer the flexibility to choose the durations

The music of Franz Liszt has become widely recognized by music theorists for its harmonic and formal innovations. However, li)le a)ention has been given to adventurous rhythmic/metric aspects of Liszt’s compositional style: specifically, he frequently incorporates rich metric structures in which the notated metric layer, indicated by time signatures and bars, and heard metric layer, given by cues in

Chromatic, major-third root movement comprises a special class of triadic progression. The contrary motion of half steps, described as PL voice leading, produces a perceptual paradox that simultaneously destroys any sense of background diatonic collection and forces irreconcilable interpretations of consonance and dissonance. Richard Cohn, Richard Taruskin, Ma&hew Bribi;erStull, and Sco& Murphy identify

This article develops, for the Parisian modernist repertoire, a model of additive harmony in which voicing plays a foundational role. In comparison with the conventional extendedtriad model of additive harmony, the voicing-based model be&er describes the range of novel verticalities used in tonal progressions in this repertoire, and the features that allow those verticalities to serve as stand-ins

This article addresses the discrepancy between Schenker’s lifelong devotion to performance and the limited treatment of performance issues in the secondary literature on Schenker — a discrepancy exacerbated by the delayed publication of his performance manual The Art of Performance (2000). This study helps to ameliorate the discrepancy by examining his analysis of the Chopin Berceuse op. 57 in D-flat

[1] The significance of gender as a determining musical factor entangled in the web of music analysis has been too commonly overlooked. Adopting gender as a primary starting block can serve as a useful corrective to unintentionally biased contexts when analyzing historical musical literature. It is also a crucial consideration when a.empting the difficult theoretical task of interpreting contemporary

[1] Despite the recent surge of scholarly work on musical performance, monographs devoted to the relationship between analysis and performance are still scarce.(1) Stein 1962, Cone 1968, and Berry 1989 (along with Rink’s 1995 edited collection) provide precedents. Among more recent literature, Klorman 2016 interprets musical structure in Mozart’s chamber music as performative social interplay, and

The harmonic progression of aFCG (Am–F–C–G) and its transpositions constitute one rotation of what I call Axis progressions, namely progressions that begin with one of these four chords and cycle through the others in order, hence the Axis-a, -F, -C, and -G, respectively. Of these four progressions, the a-form and C-form, and to a lesser extent, the F-form, have become staples of mainstream popular

[2] Amiot’s book amply demonstrates that the DFT is relevant to a wide variety of musical questions—about rhythm, about pitch-class sets and interval content, and about tonality and nontonality—so many theorists will find something in the book relevant to questions in their own research. Within each of these topics, Amiot’s discourse varies between questions of primarily mathematical interest and those

[1] In today’s saturated market, creating a music theory textbook with a truly novel perspective is both rare and difficult. For this reason, John Franceschina’s Music Theory through Musical Theatre (MTMT) is a true achievement: it is the first music theory textbook aimed at college-level musical theatre students and suitable for a four-semester sequence.(1) Furthermore, MTMT’s singular focus on the

A central concern for theories of form in pop/rock music is the division of a song into sections and, consequently, the categorization of these sections according to a standard set of section labels. Psychological research on categorization shows that it is inherently a perceptual process, one that involves graded membership and fuzzy boundaries. Thus in contrast to prior theorists, who often a2empt

This article applies aspects of A Generative Theory of Tonal Music by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff to the analysis of Hindustani (North Indian) classical music, with a double-edged purpose. On the one hand, the GTTM methodology is used to illuminate the workings of an ālāp (as performed by Vijay Rajput, a vocalist in the khyāl style). On the other hand, the analysis acts as a case study to assess

This article analyzes the music of five female improvisers. I employ these women’s lived experiences of discrimination as a basis for my analysis of improvisation in terms of what I call subjective (re)positioning. Given these women’s experiences of discrimination, trust means something far richer than musically working together during performance. Trusting improvising partners create a conceptual

Traditionally, explicit discussion of listeners’ bodies and personal experiences does not often appear in the realm of music analytical observations. One of the reasons for this omission is the masculinist bias that, prior to the 1990s, characterized much of the field, and that tended to dismiss metaphorical language, overtly subjective musical descriptions, and the role of the body in musical practices

The medieval composers of polytextual motets have been charged with rendering multiple texts inaudible by superimposing them. While the limited contemporary evidence provided by Jacobus’s comments in the Speculum musicae seems at first sight to suggest that medieval listeners would have had trouble understanding texts declaimed simultaneously, closer scrutiny reveals the opposite: that intelligibility

[1] In Everything in its Right Place, Brad Osborn offers an in-depth analysis of the music by English rock group Radiohead. Many readers will be familiar with this band’s career trajectory, including its early associations with the grunge and Britpop movements and its increasing experimentation beginning with the album OK Computer (1997). For evidence of its current critical standing, one need look

From June 1–3, 2017, the School of Music at Lee University in Cleveland, TN hosted a conference that was exclusively focused on music theory pedagogy, titled “Pedagogy into Practice: Teaching Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century”. This conference was sponsored by the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy in partnership with the editorial boards of the Journal of Music Theory

[1] One of the many golden-anniversary commemorations of the Beatles’ iconic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a very successful conference organized by Walter Evere7 and hosted by the University of Michigan on June 1–4, 2017. The conference’s start date marked fifty years to the day since the worldwide release of Sgt. Pepper on June 1, 1967 (the UK release took place several days earlier