BAIN MUSC 525Post-Tonal Music Theory

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Straus Ch. 4CENTRICITY AND SOME IMPORTANT REFERENTIAL COLLECTIONS

TERMS & CONCEPTS

tonality (p. 112)functional harmony (p. 112)traditional voice leading (p. 112)dissonance treatment (p. 112)tone center (p. 112)pitch or pitch-class center (p. 112)tonal vs. centric music (p. 112-113)centricity (pp. 112-116)contextual means of reinforcement (p. 114)static, non-progressive harmony (p. 115)C-centricity, E-centricity, etc. (p. 116)centric ambiguity (p. 116)spectrum of centric effects (p. 116)remnants of traditional tonality (p. 116)referential collections (p. 116-123)

diatonic 7-35 (013568T)octatonic 8-28 (0134679T)whole-tone 6-35 (02468T)

non-functional, static diatonicism (p. 117)modal music (pp. 117-118)collectional/scalar orderings (p. 118)

diatonic collection - 12octatonic collection – 3whole-tone collection – 2

referential collections and aspects of symmetryreferential collections and complement relations

diatonic/major pentatonicoctatonic/fully-diminished seventh chordwhole-tone collection/itself

harmonic field (p. 120)distinct forms (p. 120)subset structure (p. 120)highest possible degree of symmetry (p. 122)collectional interaction and points of intersection (p.

123-126)shifting between collectional orderings (p. 123)octatonic-diatonic interaction (pp. 124-125)Stravinsky and 4-3 (0134): “two minor thirds joined

by a major third” (p. 124)static polarity and competing centers (p. 125)interval cycles: C1-C6 (p. 126-127)combining cycles (p. 127)hexatonic collection (p. 127)inversional axis (pp. 127-131)changing chord from Schoenberg Op. 16, No. 3

IMPORTANT COLLECTIONS ANDCOLLECTIONAL ORDERINGS

Collection Collectional Orderingswith Straus Name and instance indicated

Set Class ComplementarySet Class

Octatonic 3 collectional orderings:OCT0,1[C,Db,Eb,E,F#,G,A,Bb]OCT1,2[C#,D,E,F,G,G#,A#,B]OCT2,3[D,Eb,F,F#,G#,A,B,C]

8-28 (0134679T) 4-28 (0369)The fully-diminished

seventh chord

Diatonic 12 collectional orderings corresponding to the 12major key signatures:0-sharp (or 0-flat): [B,C,D,E,F,G,A]1-flat: [E,F,G,A,Bb,C,D]1-sharp: [F#,G,A,B,C,D,E]etc.(See pp. 118-119 for a complete chart.)

7-35 (013568T) 5-35 (02479)The major pentatonic

collection

Whole-tone 3 collectional orderings:WT0 [C,D,E,F#,G#,A#]WT1 [Db,Eb,F,G,A,B]

6-35 (02468T) 6-35 (02468T)

BAIN MUSC 525Post-Tonal Music Theory

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Quotable

“Composers often use certain large sets as sources of pitch material. By drawing all or most of the smaller setsfrom a single large referential set, composers can unify entire sections of music.”

“Be aware of the stabilizing effect of large, referential collections.”

“A great deal of post-tonal music focuses on specific pitches, pitch classes and pitch-class sets as a way ofshaping and organizing the music.”

[On priority] “In the most general sense, notes that are stated frequently, sustained at length, placed in aregistral extreme, played loudly, and rhythmically or metrically stressed tend to have priority over notes thatdon’t have those attributes.”

“Be sensitive to the range of centric effects in post-tonal music. There usually won’t be a single obvious pitchcenter. Often, there will be a clash, or polarity, of competing centers [Recall Cone’s idea of polar couplespresented in A View from Delft]. You will need to be flexible in evaluating the different ways that pitches, pitchclasses and pitch-class sets get emphasized and the ways that such emphasis shapes the music.”

“Music may shift from one [collectional ordering] to another and musical passages can be understood in termsof the interpenetration of one [collection] by another.”

“Large collections may interact and interpenetrate over the course of a passage or a piece. In analyzing post-tonal music, one music be sensitive not only to the motivic interplay of the surface, but to the larger referentialcollections that lurch beneath the surface.”

[On Schoenberg’s Op. 11, No. 1] “tonality operates in this piece like a ghost, haunting the structure with itspresence, but impossible to pin down in any satisfactory way.

“…octatonic collections frequently emerge as by-products of transpositional schemes involving minor thirdsand tritones.”

Joseph Straus Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory