A Linguistic Theory of Chromatic Harmonic Substitution and Progression in the Diatonic Unconscious

The chapter constructs an energetic model of harmonic progression in which tense chords are signifiers of tonal functions (Riemann’s T, S, and D functions). The paradigm adopts the linguistic axes that Lacan mapped as metaphor and metonymy, which were crucial to the formation of a human subject at whose center lies désir. The theoretical claims build on the recent work of David Lewin (2007), Richard Cohn (2012a), Steven Rings (2011a), Dmitri Tymoczko (2011a), Brian Hyer (2011), and others but also reevaluate the earlier work of Ernest Kurth (1920), Hugo Riemann (1893), and Ernö Lendvai (1993). The chapter seeks to account for voice leading, modulation, and tonal diversity in a broad range of works

Regiões Euler: um Estudo sobre Distância Tonal e Integração entre os Ciclos Octatônicos e Hexatônicos

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre distância tonal a partir de certos pressupostos estabelecidos por David Lewin (1982), Richard Cohn (1996; 2012), Jack Douthett & Peter Steinbach (1998), Clifton Callender (1998), Steven Baker (2003) e Dmitri Tymoczko (2011), entre outros. Demonstra como os ciclos octatônicos (descritos por Douthett e Steinbach), formados por acordes de sétima, podem conectar-se com as tríades consonantes dos ciclos hexatônicos (descritos por Cohn). Tal conexão entre acordes de diferentes cardinalidades é possível por meio de uma região harmônica denominada “região Euler”, em referência a um trabalho publicado pelo matemático e teórico Leonhard Euler no século XVIII, no qual uma topologia de tríades aumentadas resulta em acordes maiores com sétima maior. Uma breve análise de um quarteto de Villa-Lobos ilustra a importância das regiões Euler entre as tétrades e tríades perfeitas.

Alternative Neo-Riemannian Approaches to Carl Nielsen

On the basis of songs or songlike themes from three periods of Nielsen’s career I try to show how Nielsen’s harmonic progressions become simpler while displaying a more refined complexity. I do this on the basis of the theories of the Danish scholar/composers Jorgen Jersild and Jan Maegaard which are, in various degrees, based on Riemannian analysis. The two Danes thus represent an alternative neo-Riemannian approach to harmonic analysis. This approach was developed from 1970 to 1989, the very same years in which Erno Lendvai, David Lewin, Deborah Stein and Harald Krebs wrote their respective groundbreaking works. Even though Jersild’s and Maegaard’s theories were developed independently of these writers, their content communicates with the content of their theories. And even though a theory of foreground harmonic progressions like Jersild’s is seemingly as opposed as possible to a Schenkerian middleground-based harmonic approach, they do actually, in some regards, have something in common, just as in other regards they supplement each other perfectly. I try, through the analyses of Nielsen’s music plus a few other examples (Schumann, Liszt and Wolf), to show how the theories of these above mentioned many writers and others, may be integrated into the two Danish theories. In discussing analytical theories the text is especially conversant with two recent books on Nielsen, Anne-Marie Reynolds’ The Voice of Carl Nielsen (2010) and Daniel Grimley’s Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism (2011), as the two main analyses refer to analyses in Reynolds and Grimley respectively.

Telos and Temporality: Phenomenology and the Experience of Time in Lewin's Study of Perception

In his 1986 essay on the intersections between music theory, phenomenology, and perception, David Lewin develops a heuristic model through which to come to terms with the constitution of multiple and heterogeneous perceptions of musical events. One of his principal vehicles for demonstrating this phenomenological turn is the well-known analysis of Schubert's “Morgengruß.” The present article considers the ramifications of Lewin's methodology, particularly with respect to the experience of time that emerges from Lewin's mobilization of the heuristic perception model, by approaching it from the perspective of Husserl's Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. This perspective reveals a superposition of temporalities as well as a superposition of languages as the underlying factors through which Lewin's analysis is produced.