The influence of tonal structure on tension experience in sonata pieces by Mozart and Beethoven

This study offers a comparative analysis of J. S. Bach’s Fugue in D minor, from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I (WTC I). Detailed examination of multiple divergent readings of the same musical excerpts raises important questions about Schenkerian theory and its application to fugal textures. I suggest that analytical discrepancies arise primarily when voice-leading concerns are not completely disentangled from our deeply rooted views of formal design in fugue. In the end, an over-reliance on the details of outer form risks blocking access to the fugue’s inner form. I identify and resolve significant differences that emerge at the foreground in these readings, later considering how a combined view of formal design (outer form) and tonal structure (inner form) resolves ambiguities and enhances our understanding of the work as a whole.

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18th Century Counterpoint and Tonal Structure

Music Analysis ◽

10.2307/854190 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 5 (2/3) ◽

pp. 281

Author(s):

Cristle Collins Judd ◽

Richard S. Parks

Keyword(s):

18Th Century ◽

Tonal Structure

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Tonal Structure and Scales

Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound ◽

10.7551/mitpress/4808.003.0017 ◽

1999 ◽

Keyword(s):

Tonal Structure

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Tonal structure and children’s early learning of music

Generative Processes in MusicThe Psychology of Performance, Improvisation, and Composition ◽

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198508465.003.0006 ◽

2001 ◽

pp. 113-128

Author(s):

W. Jay Dowling

Keyword(s):

Early Learning ◽

Tonal Structure

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Tonal Orientation

Hearing Homophony ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190851903.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 170-202

Author(s):

Megan Kaes Long

Keyword(s):

Statistical Learning ◽

Tonal Structure ◽

The Stability ◽

Structural Levels

The balletto and canzonetta have highly regulated strophic sectional forms. Three characteristics of these forms facilitate tonal expectation: they are comprehensible, and can easily be segmented by a naïve listener, they are highly repetitive, facilitating statistical learning and directing listener attention toward higher structural levels, and they are predictable, both because they are repetitive and because they manipulate consistent generic norms. Together, these features equipped listeners to attend in meaningful ways to ever more remote relationships between dominant and tonic signposts. In turn, composers exploited the stability of form and tonal structure across the repertoire, manipulating formal norms to create meaning.

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Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: Voice Leading, Tonal Structure, and the Th eme of Self-Realization in the Music of Sarah McLachlan

Expression in Pop-Rock Music ◽

10.4324/9780203940044-15 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 271-288

Keyword(s):

Voice Leading ◽

Tonal Structure

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From pitch contour variation to tone change

International Journal of Chinese Linguistics ◽

10.1075/ijchl.16016.hua ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 273-307

Author(s):

Karen Huang

Keyword(s):

Optimality Theory ◽

Pitch Contour ◽

Tone Sandhi ◽

Tonal Structure ◽

Lexical Tones ◽

Taiwan Mandarin

Abstract This study illustrates how three level tones might have developed diachronically by comparing two synchronic Mandarin dialects. In Standard Mandarin (SM), the four lexical tones are denoted as /H, LH, L, HL/ or /H, R, L, F/ phonologically. However, based on evidence from two acoustic experiments, this study proposes that the four lexical tones in Taiwan Mandarin (TM) should be analyzed as /H, M, L, HM/, with /H, HM/ in a high register and /M, L/ in a low register. The proposed tonal structure can account for all the tone sandhi in TM using the framework of Optimality theory, and the register difference plays an important role in the analyses. Also, the new TM tonal representation has an advantage in explaining the absence of the SM Tone 2 Sandhi. The new tonal representations illuminate how pitch contour differences might have developed into structural tone changes.

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The Tonal Structure of Brian's ‘Gothic’ Symphony

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200032149 ◽

1981 ◽

pp. 33-40

Author(s):

Lionel Pike

Keyword(s):

Good Reason ◽

Tonal Structure ◽

The Past

The performance of Havergal Brian's huge and rarely-heard First Symphony, The Gothic (?1919–27), on 25 May 1980 gave us a further opportunity to assess its value. In the past, adulation of the Symphony has been blended with strong criticism. Among the detractors have been those who were unable to follow the logic of a symphony that starts in D minor and ends in E major without (if one believes all that one reads) any good reason; and there have been those who found the opening movement too slight and episodic, too unsymphonic, for the weight cast upon it. It is time to re-examine these criticisms.

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