[Smt-talk] Inception chord progression

[Darryl White]

I guess I would say that the question is whether we can give objective
evidence for the presence or absence of hexatonicism.  What can we say to
bridge the gap between people whose intuitions differ from ours?

I think there are a few reasons to be generally skeptical about the role of
the hexatonic scale in 19th-century chromaticism:

I'm not thinking in terms of any objectivity or evidence.  Rather than
looking for overt hexatonicism, I'm using the hexatonic collection as a
means of structural identification aside from any question of how such a
progression may be heard.  I should have made this distinction clear in the
context of my observation about the tonal emphasis.

Hence, the practice of 19th-c. chromaticism, specifically, or even rock
music, is not in view when examining examples like this, since I'm
interested in a generalized perspective on chromatic harmony that uses the
hexatonic collection.  I think useful observations can be made that make no
claims for compositional intent or perceptual matters.

Darryl White
Ph.D. Student
Music Theory
The School of Music
The University of Arizona


On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 5:17 AM, Dmitri Tymoczko <dmitri at princeton.edu>
wrote:
> On Aug 11, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Darryl White wrote:
>
>> This little chord series does pose some interesting issues for
>> analysis.  I do think hexatonicism is involved.
>
> I guess I would say that the question is whether we can give objective
> evidence for the presence or absence of hexatonicism.  What can we say to
> bridge the gap between people whose intuitions differ from ours?
>
> I think there are a few reasons to be generally skeptical about the role
of
> the hexatonic scale in 19th-century chromaticism:
>
>        1) The scale almost never appears as a melodic entity.
>        2) The scale almost never appears as a macroharmony -- that is, it
> almost never accounts for all and only the notes in a reasonably long
> stretch of music.
>        3) There's almost no discussion of it in 19th-century theoretical
or
> compositional sources.  (Unlike, say, the octatonic or harmonic major.)
>        4) We have good reason to think that the scale will be
automatically
> generated as the result of certain kinds of voice leading procedures.
>
> To me, these four claims provide good reason to be dubious about the
> presence of hexatonicism in any given passage -- consequently, I would say
> that we need some compelling reason, lodged in some specific feature of
the
> music in question, to motivate the claim that the scale is present.  (This
> line of argument, BTW, goes back to my earliest papers, such as
"Stravinsky
> and the Octatonic.")
>
> In the Inception progression, the specific analytical question is whether
we
> draw a sharp distinction between the (nonhexatonic) Gmin->Gb major voice
> leading, and the (seemingly very similar) Ebmaj->Bmaj voice leading.
>  (Treating the Bmajor for the moment as a triad, rather than a seventh.)
> Both of these move two notes by one semitone and, for all reasonable
> measures of voice leading size, are the same size.  So if we emphasize
voice
> leading, we'll see these two progressions as being very similar, whereas
if
> we emphasize hexatonicism, they'll seem very different.
>
> Note also that from a strict NR-perspective, Gmin->Gb major involves
*three*
> voice leading moves (L-then-P-then-R), and thus is even less similar to
> Ebmaj->Bmaj (P-then-L).
>
> DT
>
> Dmitri Tymoczko
> Associate Professor of Music
> 310 Woolworth Center
> Princeton, NJ 08544-1007
> (609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)
> http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Smt-talk mailing list
> Smt-talk at societymusictheory.org
>
http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.societymusictheory.org/pipermail/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org/attachments/20100812/c24df454/attachment-0003.htm>