Intervals and Atonality

21M.260: INTERVALS AND ATONALITY Intervals in Tonal Music In tonal music, usually think of intervals—that is the distance in pitch space between two notes—as made up of two things: first the number of lines or spaces separating the two pitches (a unison if they’re on the same line, a second[!] if they are one line or space apart, a third if two, and so on). and then based on the quality of sound (major, minor, diminished, augmented). We call an interval between two notes major if it appears in a major scale beginning on the lower of the two notes. We call an interval between two notes minor if it appears in a major scale beginning on the higher of the two notes. For instance, we call C to A (the first interval below) a major sixth because A appears in a Cmajor scale, but not vice-versa. However, we call the second interval below (C to A♭) a minor sixth because C appears in an A♭-major scale and not in a C major scale: The intervals of the fourth, fifth, and eighth (octave) are exceptions. A fourth or fifth which appears in both a major and minor scale, such as C-G or A♭-E♭ is called “perfect”. An interval smaller by one half-step than a perfect (or minor) interval we call diminished, while an interval larger than a perfect (or major) interval we call augmented, as follows: In traditional harmony, all augmented and diminished intervals are considered dissonant, while the perfect fifth and the perfect octave are consonant (the perfect fourth is generally considered a disso­ nance although it retains some consonant qualities). The other intervals are consonant or dissonant depending on their scalar distance and not according to their quality (i.e., thirds and sixths are conso­ nances whether major or minor. Seconds and sevenths are dissonances). These definitions of consonance and dissonance, while somewhat rooted in acoustical phenomenon1 are generally culturally defined: in other parts of the world, sixths are not considered consonances while seconds are, for instance, or other notes not available in our system (half-flats and so on) might be considered consonances. Intervals in Atonal Music The nomenclature we have used (“Major second” etc.) ties notes to dissonant or consonant qualities and to scales, which are artifacts of tonal music. Thus it should not be surprising that the atonal composers, and those who analyze atonal works, found these labels misleading or inadequate to the study of their works. 1 There is no known human culture which does not have the octave as an interval which is in some ways consonant. 2 These composes chose a definition of interval entirely rooted in the number of half-steps or semitones between two notes, as follows: (T = Ten, E = Eleven). Since composers were often not interested in octave displacement (that is to say, one octave was as good as any other; we call this “octave equivalence”), we usually start the list of intervals over again after 11, like the hours of a clock (except we’ve put 0 instead of 12). When we talk about notes without reference to their octave, we call this the “pitch class” of a note. For instance, all “C’s” on the piano are part of the pitch class “C”. Note also how the distance from C-D♭ is 1 and the distance from C-C♯ is also 1; that is to say, how we spell the note does not matter when we measure intervals in semitones.2 Another useful application of semitone intervals is that we can label all notes by their interval to a reference note (which is almost always chosen to be C), so, for instance we can label the pitch class E♭ as 3 and A as 9. The note D♯ would also be 3 and the note B♭♭ would also be 9. This useful shorthand allows chords to be expressed compactly. For instance the C-major triad (C-E-G) can be called (047) — go ahead and verify this labeling from the chart above. The D♯-minor triad (D♯-F♯-A♯) could be called (36T). These labels might not seem much of a shorthand so far, since we already have good names for these chords (C-major, etc.) The usefulness comes in describing arbitrary collections. Take, for instance, the six-note collection found in Schoenberg opus 19, no. 6: Though we could call it “G-C-F-A-F♯-B,” the atonal name, 70596E, is shorter. Another thing we can do with such a collection is rearrange it so the component digits are in ascending order (05679E). This lets us see that we have a number of notes bunched up (5679 or F-F♯-G-A) with two notes further out. We can then look at other collections in the same piece, such as that found at the fermata of measure 6: And see that this one is (42605T) or written in ascending order (02456T). Again we can see that we have a number of notes bunched together with a few outliers, so these two chords, both found in prominent positions in the piece are in a sense related. (There are many more sophisticated ways of comparing these two collections, such as finding normal and prime forms, looking at interval content and interval vectors, subcollections, etc. If you’re interested in these types of things, a twentieth­ 2 C to C♯ in tonal music would be called an “augmented prime” while C to D♭ would be called a “minor second,” two different intervals. In atonal music these two intervals are the same. 3 century analysis course such as 21M.310 is probably just the trick. We’re going to be moving a bit too fast in this class to get into things in detail). Interval number sets also allow us to see if two sets of pitches are related to each other by transposition. That is to say, is there an interval up or down we can move a chord or melody or pitch set to match another chord, melody, or pitch set. Consider these two melodies from Webern, Fünf Sätze, move­ ment four: We can write the first melody’s pitch set as (046E17T). The second melody (remember that you’re in alto clef!3) is F-A-B-E-F♯-C-E♭ or (59E4603). What we can ask is “Can we add some number to every member of the first melody to get the second (or vice versa)?” The answer is yes! The pitches of the first melody transform into those of the second if we add 5 to each of them: 046E17T +5555555 ------------------5 9 E 4 6 0 3 (recall that E = 11, so E+5 = 16, and 16:00 is the same as 4:00, so E+5 = 4) …which is the second melody! We sometimes say that first melody’s pitches transform into the se­ cond’s under the T5 operation, meaning transpose up 5 half-steps (and down an octave!). The second melody is related to the first by using the T7 operation (double check this for yourself). A big difference between an analysis class and a music history class is that the historian now needs to ask further questions. Why does Webern choose to use two transpositionally related melodies in this piece? What is the effect of these relations on the listener? Why does he not choose to use the same rhythms between the two statements? Are there historical precedents for this type of operation? Can we perceive the relationship between these two statements? (I think we can in this case, but we will ask soon, “If we can’t, does it matter?”) 3 For information on how to read alto clef and other clefs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clef