Inference of Mode in Melodies

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piet G. Vos ◽  
Paul P. Verkaart
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Music History ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Continuous Scale ◽  
Gevolgd Door ◽  
Stimulus Length ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
The Impact

Listeners' ability to infer the mode (major vs. minor) of a piece of Western tonal music was examined. Twenty-four subjects, divided into two groups according to their level of musical expertise, evaluated 11 musical stimuli, selected from J. S. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier". The stimuli included both unambiguous and ambiguous examples of the two modes, as well as one example of a modulation (from minor into major). The stimuli consisted of unaccompanied melodic openings of compositions, each containing 10 tones. Stimulus presentation and evaluation took place in nine progressively longer steps, starting with presentation of the first two tones, followed by their evaluation on a continuous scale, with 0 = "extremely minor" and 100 = "extremely major," and ending with evaluation of the complete stimulus. The results showed that mode inference followed the prescribed modes and tended to become more definite with increasing stimulus length. Experts were generally more definite in their inferences than were nonexperts. Surprisingly, the temporal structure of stimuli also appeared to affect mode inference. The degree of definiteness of mode judgments did not systematically differ between the two modes. It was concluded that listeners are able to infer the mode of a piece of music in the absence of explicit harmonic cues. The generalizability of the results with respect to music pieces of late periods in Western music history and the impact of different musical genres on mode inference are discussed. /// Onderwerp van onderzoek betrof het perceptuele onderscheid tussen majeur en mineur. Vierentwintig proefpersonen, verdeeld in twee groepen die verschilden in nivo van muzikale expertise, evalueerden 11 hen onbekende muziek stimuli, gekozen uit J. S. Bach's "Wohltemperierte Klavier". De stimuli bevatten zowel ondubbelzinnige als ambigue voorbeelden van de twee toonsoort geslachten, alsmede een voorbeeld van modulatie (in dit geval van mineur naar majeur). De stimuli bestonden uit ongeharmonizeerde melodische openingen van composities, elk 10 tonen lang. Stimulus aanbieding en (majeur/mineur) evaluatie vonden plaats in negen toenemend langere stappen, beginnend met de aanbieding van de eerste twee tonen van een stimulus, gevolgd door een evaluatie daarvan (op een continue schaal met 0 = "uitgesproken mineur" en 100 = "uitgesproken majeur"), en eindigend met de evaluatie van de complete stimulus. De resultaten lieten zien dat de evaluaties de profilering der voorgeschreven toonsoortgeslachten volgden en stelliger werden met toenemende stimulus lengte. De experts bleken doorgaans zekerder in hun kwalificaties dan de nonexperts. Verrassend genoeg bleek ook de temporele struktuur der stimuli de beoordeling te beïnvloeden. Geconcludeerd werd dat luisteraars in staat zijn om het geslacht van de toonsoort waarin een muziekstuk staat te identificeren in afwezigheid van expliciete harmonische informatie. De generalizeerbaarheid der resultaten met betrekking tot muziekstukken uit latere perioden in de Westerse tonale muziekgeschiedenis alswel de mogelijke invloed van verschillende muzikale genres op de majeur/mineur interpretatie werden ter discussie gesteld.

Liszt at the Piano: The Impact of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Suzanne Marie Francis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
The Impact

By the time of his death in 1827, the image of Beethoven as we recognise him today was firmly fixed in the minds of his contemporaries, and the career of Liszt was beginning to flower into that of the virtuosic performer he would be recognised as by the end of the 1830s. By analysing the seminal artwork Liszt at the Piano of 1840 by Josef Danhauser, we can see how a seemingly unremarkable head-and-shoulders bust of Beethoven in fact holds the key to unlocking the layers of commentary on both Liszt and Beethoven beneath the surface of the image. Taking the analysis by Alessandra Comini as a starting point, this paper will look deeper into the subtle connections discernible between the protagonists of the picture. These reveal how the collective identities of the artist and his painted assembly contribute directly to Beethoven’s already iconic status within music history around 1840 and reflect the reception of Liszt at this time. Set against the background of Romanticism predominant in the social and cultural contexts of the mid 1800s, it becomes apparent that it is no longer enough to look at a picture of a composer or performer in isolation to understand its impact on the construction of an overall identity. Each image must be viewed in relation to those that preceded and came after it to gain the maximum benefit from what it can tell us.

scholarly journals The Rules of Engagement: Richard Taruskin and the History of Western Music

2007 ◽  
pp. 21-49
Author(s):  
Harry White
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

The Oxford History of Western Music (2005) is a scrutiny of the ‘literate tradition’ of music in European and North American culture from the beginnings of notation to the end of the twentieth century. Richard Taruskin’s monumental and profoundly erudite engagement with a thousand years of western art music is animated from the outset by a radical critique of German idealism and the influence which this has exerted on the formation and transmission of European and American musical thought. Taruskin takes the view that as a result of this influence, the history of music has been seriously distorted, especially in regard to the contractual intelligibility of musical discourse in relation to society. The prestige of progressivism, as this is manifested in atonal and serial composition, in primitivism and neoclassicism, has enjoyed an excessive pre-eminence which eclipses in turn the narrative clarity of tonal music in the twentieth century.In this review essay, Taruskin’s indictment of historicism as a primary agent in the perpetuation of (German and Anglo-American) musicological orthodoxy is appraised in the context of his own obligations to narrative, musical analysis and the reception history of musical works. Taruskin’s identification of an historicist ‘master-narrative’ in earlier surveys of western music is considered in relation to a new master- narrative, of Taruskin’s own making, which condemns the hegemony of musical idealism at every turn. The tension which arises between this enduring preoccupation and the author’s sustained engagement with individual musical texts tends to confirm the autonomy of the musical work, not as an object immune (or indifferent) to history, but as a nexus of social, ideological and political expression which attains to a self-standing aesthetic integrity.

The Impact of Lexical and Articulatory Factors in the Automatic Selection of Test Materials for a Web-Based Assessment of Intelligibility in Dysarthria

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Katharina Lehner ◽  
Wolfram Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Examination ◽  
Clinical Assessment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Neighborhood Structure ◽  
Test Materials ◽  
Stimulus Length ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Target Words

Purpose The clinical assessment of intelligibility must be based on a large repository and extensive variation of test materials, to render test stimuli unpredictable and thereby avoid expectancies and familiarity effects in the listeners. At the same time, it is essential that test materials are systematically controlled for factors influencing intelligibility. This study investigated the impact of lexical and articulatory characteristics of quasirandomly selected target words on intelligibility in a large sample of dysarthric speakers under clinical examination conditions. Method Using the clinical assessment tool KommPaS , a total of 2,700 sentence-embedded target words, quasirandomly drawn from a large corpus, were spoken by a group of 100 dysarthric patients and later transcribed by listeners recruited via online crowdsourcing. Transcription accuracy was analyzed for influences of lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood structure, articulatory complexity, lexical familiarity, word class, stimulus length, and embedding position. Classification and regression analyses were performed using random forests and generalized linear mixed models. Results Across all degrees of severity, target words with higher frequency, fewer and less frequent phonological neighbors, higher articulatory complexity, and higher lexical familiarity received significantly higher intelligibility scores. In addition, target words were more challenging sentence-initially than in medial or final position. Stimulus length had mixed effects; word length and word class had no effect. Conclusions In a large-scale clinical examination of intelligibility in speakers with dysarthria, several well-established influences of lexical and articulatory parameters could be replicated, and the roles of new factors were discussed. This study provides clues about how experimental rigor can be combined with clinical requirements in the diagnostics of communication impairment in patients with dysarthria.

Rhythm Quantization: Notes on the History of a Technocultural Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 340-365
Author(s):  
Landon Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Sound Technology

This chapter sketches a general history of rhythm quantization as a widespread practice in popular music culture. Quantization—a sound technology that automatically maps microrhythmic fluctuations onto the nearest beat available within a predefined metric grid—challenges traditional notions of musicking as an embodied activity that is grounded in the co-presence of human agents. At the same time, it encapsulates cultural and cognitive processes that are entirely human, fitting into a broader historical shift towards chronometric precision in Western music. Questions arising from this apparent contradiction are taken up in this chapter, which situates rhythm quantization as an emergent technocultural practice, examining its attendant technologies and requisite structures of music-theoretical knowledge, as well as its reception within the context of different musical genres.

When Temporal Certainty Doesn't Help

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-325
Author(s):  
Flor Kusnir ◽  
Slav Pesin ◽  
Gal Moscona ◽  
Ayelet N. Landau
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Input ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Target Onset ◽  
Detection Thresholds ◽  
Tactile Target ◽  
Temporal Predictability ◽  
Future Events ◽  
The Impact

In a dynamically changing environment, the ability to capture regularities in our sensory input helps us generate predictions about future events. In most sensory systems, the basic finding is clear: Knowing when something will happen improves performance on it [Nobre, A. C., & van Ede, F. (2017). Anticipated moments: Temporal structure in attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 19, 34–48, 2017]. We here examined the impact of temporal predictions on a less-explored modality: touch. Participants were instructed to detect a brief target embedded in an ongoing vibrotactile stimulus. Unbeknownst to them, the experiment had two timing conditions: In one part, the time of target onset was fixed and thus temporally predictable, whereas in the other, it could appear at a random time within the ongoing stimulation. We found a clear modulation of detection thresholds due to temporal predictability: Contrary to other sensory systems, detecting a predictable tactile target was worse relative to unpredictable targets. We discuss our findings within the framework of tactile suppression.

Musicology Makes Its Mark

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Music History ◽  
Disciplinary Practices ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the impact of musicology on Charles E. Ives's reception by focusing on the contributions made by musicologists to discourse about the composer during the period 1965–1985. It considers how musicologists portrayed Ives through their disciplinary practices and perceptions and shows that their image of Ives was deeply rooted in European music history. The chapter also explores how Ives became the subject of style history by looking at the work of William W. Austin, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Robert Morgan. Finally, it discusses J. Peter Burkholder's discovery that Ives's commitment to transcendentalism was not so deep nor did it extend quite so far back as had previously been assumed.

Describing Melodic Structure Using a MusicTracker — Issues in Notation Andsound

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Ŝerman ◽  
Niall J. L. Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Preliminary Research

This paper describes preliminary research towards the development of a system that can be used to investigate the mechanisms and representations underlying segmentation and phrase structure in music. It discusses the use of rules and principles in The Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983) and Implication Realization Model (Narmour, 1990). It also discusses the limitations of score notation as the basis for analysis and modelling of melodic segmentation, with reference to the problems associated withtranscribing non-Western music that uses different scales and exploits different organisations of melodic descriptors. This discussion provides a rationale for a methodology thatcan be applied to recorded music rather than notation. It describes MusicTracker — a toolthat extracts measures of change in pitch, dynamics and timbre fromrecordings of monophonic melodies. The use of this tool is illustrated with short fragments of musicfrom Japan, Burundi and Gabon.

scholarly journals Spatio-temporal Structure of the Boundary Layer under the Impact of Mountain Waves

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 409-424
Author(s):  
Norbert Kalthoff ◽  
Bianca Adler ◽  
Inge Bischoff-Gauss
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Mountain Waves ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Impact
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