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<font size="-1"><font face="Georgia">There is something odd in the
question itself: what are the "musical material" and its "contour". A
[melodic] line? Is the "material" stretched equally (all intervals
stretched by the same amount), proportionnally or at random? One could
stretch a pitch-class set, I presume, but then any set of a given
cardinality could be described as a case of complex (unequal, positive
or negative) stretching of any other set of the same cardinality. And a
set would appear to have a "contour" only if unfolded in time.<br>
<br>
>From a purely analytical point of view, the matter of contour has been
of some concern for researches about the detection of similitudes
between melodic lines (e.g. for automated "paradigmatic" analysis or
for tests of similitude perception – see for instance
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~marksch/Schmuckler%201999.pdf">http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~marksch/Schmuckler%201999.pdf</a>). The most
general description seems to relate to the melody keeping the same
disposition of (upper or lower) peaks. This is melodic contour properly
speaking, "</font></font><font face="Georgia" size="-1">the sequence of
ups and downs in a melody, regardless of interval size" (Dowling &
Fujitani, JASA 1971).</font><br>
<font size="-1"><font face="Georgia"><br>
One interesting case is when the intervals are modified because the
underlying scale is changed – the obvious case is when a melody in a
major key is repeated in a minor key, but it is by no means the only
one. Other cases displace a melodic contour within a single scale (e.g.
diatonic transposition). Tonal answer (mentioned by Ralph Locke)
preserves tonal characteristics within the scale. The reason why the
intervallic transformation has not often been named as such may be that
it is but an indirect consequence of other operations.<br>
<br>
Cordialement,<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr">nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.plm.paris-sorbonne.fr">http://www.plm.paris-sorbonne.fr</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</font></font><br>
Richard Lewis a écrit :
<blockquote cite="mid:87d4a4xecj.wl%25richard.lewis@gold.ac.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Can anyone think if there's an accepted term to describe the
phenomenon where some musical material is stretched in pitch (making
the intervals bigger but preserving the contour). The first thing that
comes to mind is 'augmentation', but this is usually only applied to
rhythmic alteration.
I suspect that, as this phenomenon is not common in the Western canon,
it may have escaped categorisation by the early C20th arbiters of
music theory. Though I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
Best wishes,
Richard
</pre>
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