I am looking for literature on this topic. For example:

• How has the Roman numeral syntax changed over the years (from the Weber notation up to contemporary harmony textbooks)
• When did people start writing things like "V/V" (secondary dominants or things beyond the mere scale degree)
• When did people start writing Roman numerals with inversions of the form "V65", "V43", etc.

Any guidance on relevant literature about this topic would be very welcome.

Néstor

I'm wondering if I can get your take on how you assess student dictations and sight-singing, and in particular how to translate this to a grade? For example:

• Given a short four-bar, single-voice melody that's heard three times, how do you grade this melodic dictation? Do you use a letter grade, a rubric, or points (e.g. out of 100)? If so, how do you determine the grade? How do students earn partial credit?
  
   
• Given a short sight-singing example where students have to conduct while singing in solfège, how do you grade this? Similarly, do you use a letter grade / rubric / points or something else? How do students earn partial credit?

I think I've tried a lot of different ways to translate student performance to some kind of measurable value (for the purposes of calculating a grade, and to provide a data point for students that reflects their performance), but am trying to see if there are better practices out there.

Thank you!



George

I was wondering if any of you could help me with an issue I'm having. I have been using pitch-class sums to represent how dark or light a scale feels. So for example, C major, when you add all of its values together from pitch-class space, would have a sum of 38. C Phrygian, on the other hand, would have a sum of 34. Now I thought this might be because the smaller intervallic distances, when related to the root of the scale, would be causing the sum to be lower in the case of C Phrygian, therefore the scale would be shown to be darker. But the whole process seems rather dubious to me.

So I tried other ways of representing a scale's darkness or lightness by mapping them onto the circle of fifths. C major had most of its intervals on the 'brighter' fifths side whereas C Phrygian had most of its intervals mapped on the 'darker' fourths side. But again it doesn't feel like a strong way to represent it academically.

I think I was going to try a third way of cross-referencing with the harmonic series. The method here was to take a 12-tet approximated harmonic series (sorry JI fans) and make the assumption that intervals that find themselves further away from a fundamental of C have a weaker pull to said fundamental thus making it more dissonant/ dark. For example, the interval b9 would be the 9th interval to appear in this 12-tet approximated harmonic series, whereas a natural 2 would be the 5th interval to appear making it more consonant than the aforementioned b9. This would also make C Phrygian darker than C major as many of its intervals would be further away from the C fundamental than the intervals in the C major scale. But again I'm unsure of this method, mainly because it uses an approximated harmonic series. 

So basically what I'm asking is, is there a way you can represent consonance and dissonance/ brightness and darkness in an objective and quantifiable way?

It is my pleasure to announce the publication of my new article “The Defects of A Reigning Theory”. It criticises Schenkerian theory. A list of suggested major defects of Schenkerian theory is exposed below. Each one of those headlines is examined separately in the article.

1. Repudiation of the subdominant function and the plagal cadence.

2. Imposition of an exaggerated notion of functional prolongation, which leads to elimination of stepwise cadences as well as implied cadences over a pedal point.

3. Repudiation of ascending melodic lines and the leading tone as structurally important factors in background analysis.

4. Interpretation of typical six-four chords as dissonant sonorities.

5. Neglect of rhythm and phrase structure as important factors in tonal analysis.

Of course, one cannot build a representative house on two beams (Tonic and Dominant), and it is there where the trouble begins.

The link from which you can read and download the article is:

http://casopisi.junis.ni.ac.rs/index.php/FUVisArtMus/index

I hope you have a good reading, and I welcome comments on this matter. 

Best regards,

Dimitar Ninov

Texas State University

Some fellow theorists and composers contacted me privately about my article "Interior Cadences in the Sentence of Schoenberg" (link provided in my previous discussion with the same tilte) implying that that "it couldn’t be on a more important topic". This stimulated me to emphasize a few important things about cadencs in general, as follows:

The presence or absence of a cadence is not determined by the bass position of the last two chords in a harmonic progression, but by the functional interaction between the chords at the end of a musical gesture. The bass may enhance or diminish the effect of a cadence.

Therefore, instead of staring anxiously at the last two bass notes of a given harmonic progression in an attempt to recognize or deny a cadence, the analyst had better listen to the interaction among harmonies and other elements of texture as they shape a musical idea into a state of relative or absolute conclusion.

The beauty of cadence lies in its nuances of strength. The elimination of these nuances practically kills the concept of cadence, leaving the analyst with no choice but to call “a cadence” only the root position authentic closure. This approach drains music analysis of color and diversity, and makes it gray, monotonous, highly predictable, and uniform. I feel sorry for all those students who are taught harmony and musical form in this manner. For them, all the variety of cadential nuances, all the colorful palette of cadential formulas will remain hidden if not forbidden, along with the opportunity to make music analysis more flexible and more open to real music.

Thank you. I welcome any kinds of comments on the above reflections.

With best wishes,

Dimitar Ninov

Texas State University

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new article “Interior Cadences in the Sentence of Schoenberg” in Musicological Annual, which is available in both hard copy and online issue. I am sure this will be an intriguing and provocative reading for those who specialize in tonal harmony and musical form. Therein I take an issue with my friend William Caplin’s notion of cadence, his allegation that all sentences lack interior cadences, and his assumption that functional prolongation inevitably negates cadence.

You could read and download this article here:

Dimitar Ninov – Interior Cadences in the Sentence of Schoenberg. Musicological Annual, Vol. 57 No. 1 (2021), pp. 131-148

https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/MuzikoloskiZbornik/issue/view/735/566

The topic is pretty engaging and a subject of debate, but I have always had the feeling that the traditional notion of cadence is overwhelmingly supported across the musical world, while the so-called “new concept of cadence” which only recognizes two cadential types: PAC and a root position IAC – has only been supported by the Schenkerian community. With that being said, I welcome all kinds of expressed opinions on that matter.

Thank you. I hope you enjoy the reading.

Dimitar Ninov

Texas State University

I'm interested in your thoughts about the implementation of transcription projects in aural skills that are centered around transcribing music for which there is no accessible score. I'm hoping to use music for which there is no score for several reasons:

1. I'd like to try to diversify the kinds of music that my students are engaging with.
2. I've had a lot of issues with cheating in other classes at my institution, and I'm concerned that students will just have Google listen to the recording, tell them the piece, and then simply find the score and copy directly from there.
3. There is also something very artificial and contrived about having students transcribe music for which scores are easily accesible. When would they ever need to do this in real life?

The main issue that I'm thinking about is assessment. I don't have time to try to transcribe lots of music, and even if I did, the idea of grading the accuracy of a transcription of music for which there is no score seems problematic. I like the structure of Megan Long's project that she uses here: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:27839/, but she doesn't provide much information on grading something like this.



I guess I don't have any specific questions at this point, but am more interested to hear what other people have done and what you've learned in the process.

Thanks!

It is my pleasure to announce that my theoretical article "Functional Nature of The Cadential Six-Four" from 2016 is now available on-line in Musicological Annual. Two new articles of mine will be published by the end of this month, one in this journal, and one in another journal. I hope you will enjoy this essay which argues that the Cad. 6/4 is not a mere V chord with two non-chord tones, but much more than that, including the possibility of fusing with a passing tonic six-four on a strong beat. Here is the link:

Dimitar Ninov, "Finctional Nature of The Cadential Six-Four". Musicological Annual Vol. 52 No. 1 (2016), pp. 73-96

https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/MuzikoloskiZbornik/issue/view/551/338

I have about 3000 melody files encoded as MusicXML here (soon to be much more) and I'd like to be able to find a tool that will allow me to compare those melodies to each other looking for possible matches / similarities. What existing tools or algorithms are there? I can pretty easily convert these files to other formats as needed. 

Thanks!

Hopefully this doesn't violate the forum guidelines... I've designed a new font for music analysis (RNA and functional). It's designed to be typed directly into a music notation program as lyrics. It's called MusAnalysis.

It's available for free (or donation) here: musanalysis.com. Here's a screenshot of a recent sample, all typed in as lyrics (well, not the notes on the staff... just the analysis, and the arrows):

Happy to answer any questions about it. You can post suggestions here.

Thank you for any help!

Zac Cairns

I’m writing to ask for help finding literature on two seemingly unrelated topics.

My first topic is music analysis and theology – specifically Christian theology, but as my focus will be largely methodological, interesting relations between music analysis and other theologies would also be good to hear about.  In looking at music analysis, I aim to cast a wide net, so not restricted to analysis of notated musical texts, for example, but I do exclude two things.  I am looking at specific configurations of musical sound, so theological perspectives on the materials of music in general (e.g. the Boethian tradition) are outside the bounds of my study.  I also exclude examinations of texted music whose theological connections are limited to the text itself.

It’s a huge topic, and the results on RILM are overwhelming.  So I’m looking for pointers especially toward works that stand out for putting music analysis and theology into relationship in particularly insightful/interesting/idiosyncratic ways.  Please don't be bashful about drawing your own work to my attention!

The second topic is the way in which specific performance inflections can steer the meaning and expression of music in one direction or another.  For example, how might a performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony take a position on its being either triumphant or sarcastic?  Or, how can a cover or a remix of a pop song change meaning and expression in relation to the original?  Especially as the literature on this topic is much smaller, I’d be happy to hear about insightful discussions of any kind, including in magazine articles, record reviews, etc.

These are both in support of my work on the chapter on music analysis for the Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology.  Many thanks in advance for replies, either public or private. 

Best wishes,

John

I should like to alert you to the publication of a new two-part study on my website, entitled "Mozart's Delayed Dominants" at http://www.channanwillner.com/online.htm. Part I demonstrates that in Mozart's (and in other late 18th-century) sonata form, the arrival of the structural dominant is often delayed almost to the end of the exposition by long-range bass unfoldings and voice exchanges. Part II observes how the dominant is similarly delayed by temporarily incomplete treatment of the composition's structural register.

With thanks, and apologies for cross-posting,

Channan

In addition to checking compliance with voice leading rules, the server-side software (written in Python and based on the music21 toolkit) parses the linear structure of each line in the contrapuntal exercise. The parser in effect looks for Ursatz structures and subsequent composing-out elaborations. The pedagogical tool, however, carries out this proto-Schenkerian analysis behind the scenes and does not reveal the result to the student; that is because I think the ability to analyze the structure of lines in counterpoint is a skill the student has to learn from practice. 

As a kind of proof-of-concept for WesterParse, I have now developed a companion website that allows a user to see the results produced by the parser: https://ada.artsci.wustl.edu/wp_web_project/corpus/

To test the validity of the WesterParse algorithms, I assembled a small corpus of 145 examples, about half of which are taken from Westergaard’s textbook. The user can select an example and then click on a button to parse the syntax. In addition to displaying the brief text report on the parse that users of the pedagogical tool would see, the corpus tool also displays the results in musical notation, in the style of Schenker. In cases where the lines are structurally ambiguous, the corpus tool will present multiple analyses. 

WesterParse produces some minor deviations from Westergaard’s analyses, attributable to minor differences in handling ambiguity. Westergaard, for example, allows rule A1 (S1 in my nomenclature) to attach to a nonfinal pitch, whereas WesterParse does not. On the whole, however, WesterParse reproduces Westergaard’s analyses, where he provided such. 

The corpus site also has links to the online pedagogical tool and the code documentation. And the latter includes a link to a list of Westergaard’s counterpoint rules.

If anyone has feedback on the corpus tool or has an interest in collaborating on further development of WesterParse, please contact me privately. 



Robert Snarrenberg

Associate Professor of Music and Comparative Literature

Washington University in St. Louis

In the music that I have thought the most about from an analytical standpoint—that is, Western classical music—a central climax or highpoint that formally bisects a piece seems to be rare. But, in recent years, a fairly well-known example from the world of rock has struck me as special in this respect: Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Given Jimmy Page's compositional proclivities, I rather doubt that the placement of this climax very close to the midpoint was an accident. (In this case, I mean by "climax" a peak of intensity or emotion, if not necesaarily a unique melodic peak.) Can anyone think of other pieces, in any style, that exemplify something like this from an emotional or formal standpoint? Also, might the "influence" of musical practices of the region that gives the song its title be relevant?

Mark Anson-Cartwright, Queens College, CUNY

We have been exploring the idea of "perfect tempo" as analogous to perfect pitch – that is, if humans are able to train themselves to identify certain BPM through hearing a metronome source or to reproduce a given BPM through tapping or other means of onset production. To aid in research for this topic, we created an iOS app called Tempo Maestro. Our vision is for this app to serve as a pedagogical tool to aid in improving tempo indentification, reproduction, and consistency. Our primary goal is to collect (anonymous) data to see how effective the app is at helping users improve these skills in a game-like atmosphere. The app is purely for research purposes, not for profit in any way. We are in the process of growing our user base, and we would greatly appreciate if you could download the app and share with students and colleagues within your program.

Here are the relevant links for further information and for downloading:

‎Tempo Maestro on the App Store

Tempo Maestro | Improve Your Tempo Skills

Please reach out if you have questions or feedback, thank you!