Music Theory and Analysis

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Article

Aaron [Aron], Pietro  

Bonnie J. Blackburn

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

[Piero]

(b Florence, c1480; d after 1545). Italian theorist and composer. Nothing is known of Aaron’s early training, his teacher, or his career before 1516. He claims to have had ‘the greatest friendship and familiarity’ with Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and Agricola in Florence (most likely between 1487 and 1495, and not necessarily at the same time). By 1516 he was a priest in Imola, where he wrote his first book, Libri tres de institutione harmonica, translated into Latin by the humanist Giovanni Antonio Flaminio. A contemporary poem by Achille Bocchi praises Aaron for rescuing music ‘from squalor and dismal neglect’. By March 1520 he was a singer in Imola Cathedral and from the next year a chaplain; he was also paid by the city to teach music to those who wished to learn. His career in Imola ended abruptly in June 1522 when he was wounded in a factional uprising and his chapel in the cathedral destroyed (Blackburn, forthcoming). By ...

Article

Absatz  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

Article

Absetzen  

Clive Brown

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
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2001

(Ger.).

As a musical term, absetzen has two meanings: (1) to separate one note from another, as is usual in staccato performance and (2) to transcribe vocal music into tablature for some solo instrument, for example lute or organ. In the 18th century Quantz described staccato playing in general as abgesetzet, and his use of the term implied lifted, off-string bow strokes on the violin; but not all staccato notes (e.g. quavers in Allegro passages and semiquavers in Allegretto) were to be abgesetzt in this sense (see Bow, §II, 2(vii) and Aufheben). For a discussion of this usage, see BoydenH, pp.412f. In its second meaning the term was in general use from the 16th to the 18th centuries. For example, the title-page of Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach’s Ein new künstlich Tabulaturbuch (Nuremberg, 1575) states that the collection includes motets and German lieder ‘auff die Orgel unnd Instrument abgesetzt’.

See also...

Article

Accentus  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(Lat.).

A term used in the 16th century (e.g. Ornithoparchus, Musicae activae micrologus, 1517) for the simple forms of plainchant based on recitation tones as used in the Epistle, Gospel, prayers etc.; for a general survey of such forms see Inflection. Accentus forms are contrasted with concentus forms, or with the more developed forms such as antiphons or responsories....

Article

Accompagnato  

Jack Westrup and David Fallows

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(It.: ‘accompanied’; past participle of accompagnare).

A short term for recitativo accompagnato, i.e. Recitative accompanied by the orchestra with expressive motifs, equivalent to recitativo obbligato. It is often used to designate a dramatically important scene, often a soliloquy (e.g. ‘Abscheulicher’ in Fidelio), which is usually followed by an aria. Handel used the term both in the strict sense of recitative, where the accompaniment allows the singer freedom (e.g. ‘O notte’ in ...

Article

Accompaniment  

David Fuller

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(Ger. Begleitung).

In the most general sense, the subordinate parts of any musical texture made up of strands of differing importance. A folksinger's listeners clap their hands in accompaniment to the song; a church organist keeps the congregation to the pitch and tempo with his or her accompaniment; the left hand provides the accompaniment to the right in a piano rag; when one part of a Schoenberg string quartet momentarily carries the symbol for Hauptstimme, the other parts are an accompaniment, though they may take their turns as Hauptstimmen later on. The meaning of the term ‘accompaniment’ is variable and not subject to rigorous definition. The countersubject of a Bach fugue ‘accompanies’ the subject, but in principle all the voices are equal and the countersubject may well be more prominent than the subject. In one sense, the added parts of a cantus firmus composition are an ‘accompaniment’, yet the pre-existing tune may be so stretched out and buried as to become less a melody than a kind of Schenkerian ...

Article

Accord (iii)  

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20 January 2001
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2001

Article

Accord (i)  

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Published in print:
20 January 2001
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2001

Article

Acoustic (term)  

Bruce Carr

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

[acoustical].

A term, meaning ‘not electric’, used in this special sense to designate a recording cut with a stylus activated directly (through a diaphragm) by sound waves rather than by electronic impulses, or, as in ‘acoustic guitar’, an instrument not amplified electronically. It was first applied to recordings in the early 1930s (electric recordings were first made in ...

Article

Acoustics  

Ronald Lewcock, Rijn Pirn, Jürgen Meyer, Carleen M. Hutchins, J. Woodhouse, John C. Schelleng, Bernard Richardson, Daniel W. Martin, Arthur H. Benade, Murray Campbell, Thomas D. Rossing, and Johan Sundberg

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

A term that can embrace all aspects of the science of sound and hearing, but is here treated in two specific senses, that of room acoustics, considered only with reference to the performance of music, and that of sound-source acoustics, limited to various classes of musical instruments and the voice. For other acoustical matters see Hearing and psychoacoustics and Sound; for the history of the subject see Physics of music.

Ronald Lewcock and Rijn Pirn, assisted by Jürgen Meyer

A room that has good acoustics is one in which it is possible to hear each sound clearly in all parts of the room; or, in other words, a room in which the sound is adequately loud and evenly distributed. In addition, it is normally required that the quality of sound being listened to in the room should match the type of sound being produced by the source. Room acoustics are relied on in some cases to sustain the sound in the room after the original source has stopped producing it, thus masking unevennesses in the ensemble, while in other cases sound too much sustained would mask the clarity of individual instruments or small groups. Acoustical problems are further complicated if opera is to be performed, for here every syllable is expected to be clearly heard and understood, and therefore only moderate sustained sound is desirable, yet the large ensemble demands sustained sound. Although scientific study permits a certain degree of accuracy in acoustical design, great difficulty is still experienced in determining the correct specification of the acoustics that ought to be provided....

Article

Added sixth chord  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(Fr. sixte ajouté).

In functional harmony a subdominant chord with an added major 6th above the bass (e.g. f–a–c′–d′ in C major, f–a ♭–c′–d′ in C minor); it can also be derived as the first inversion of a 7th chord built on the supertonic. The ambivalent construction of the added 6th chord engenders an ambivalence in the way it resolves, as Rameau observed in the ...

Article

Additional accompaniments  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

Article

Aeolian (i)  

Harold S. Powers

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

The name assigned by Glarean in the Dodecachordon (1547) to the authentic mode on A, which uses the diatonic octave species a–a′, divided at e′ and composed of a first species of 5th (tone–tone–semitone–tone) plus a second species of 4th (semitone–tone–tone), thus a–b–c′–d′–e′ + e′–f′–g′–a′. With this octave species identical to that of the natural minor scale on A, the Aeolian mode, together with its plagal counterpart, the Hypoaeolian, closely resembles the descending melodic minor scale.

In the minor mode of tonal music (see Tonality) the dominant lies a 5th above the tonic, or principal scale degree, and the sixth degree is characteristically a semitone above the dominant; for this reason scholars in the last three centuries have tended to think of the minor mode of tonal music as a lineal descendant of Glarean's Aeolian scale. In fact the minor tonalities of tonal music are of heterogeneous origins. Even the key of A minor is indirectly but closely related historically to the old transposed modes 1 and 2 with finals on ...

Article

Affects, theory of the  

George J. Buelow

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

Ger. Affektenlehre

In its German form, a term first employed extensively by German musicologists, beginning with Kretzschmar, Goldschmidt and Schering, to describe in Baroque music an aesthetic concept originally derived from Greek and Latin doctrines of rhetoric and oratory. Just as, according to ancient writers such as Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, orators employed the rhetorical means to control and direct the emotions of their audiences, so, in the language of classical rhetoric manuals and also Baroque music treatises, must the speaker (i.e. the composer) move the ‘affects’ (i.e. emotions) of the listener. It was from this rhetorical terminology that music theorists, beginning in the late 16th century, but especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, borrowed the terminology along with many other analogies between rhetoric and music. The affects, then, were rationalized emotional states or passions. After 1600 composers generally sought to express in their vocal music such affects as were related to the texts, for example sadness, anger, hate, joy, love and jealousy. During the 17th and early 18th centuries this meant that most compositions (or, in the case of longer works, individual sections or movements) expressed only a single affect. Composers in general sought a rational unity that was imposed on all the elements of a work by its affect. No single ‘theory’ of the affects was, however, established by the theorists of the Baroque period. But beginning with Mersenne and Kircher in the mid-17th century, many theorists, among them Werckmeister, Printz, Mattheson, Marpurg, Scheibe and Quantz, gave over large parts of their treatises to categorizing and describing types of affect as well as the affective connotations of scales, dance movements, rhythms, instruments, forms and styles....

Article

Affinalis  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

[confinalis] (Lat.)

In medieval theory, the Final of a transposed Mode. Commonly, a was the affinalis of the Dorian or Hypodorian mode transposed up a 5th and the Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode transposed up a 4th; b was the affinalis of the Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode transposed up a 5th; and c...

Article

Agogic  

Matthias Thiemel

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

A qualification of Expression and particularly of Accentuation and Periodicals, . The qualification is concerned with variations of duration rather than of dynamic level.

A pause of breath of phrasing (suspiratio) is mentioned in a number of organum sources, and in the 16th century the pause (suspirium) was recognized as having affective value. Calvisius recommended delaying or accelerating the beat in connection with the harmony and the sung text (1602). Modifications of the basic tempo seem to have become increasingly common during this period; they are clearly described in Frescobaldi’s preface to his first book of toccatas, and are also mentioned by Monteverdi.

One of the earliest pieces of evidence for the deliberate use of agogic is Cerone’s mention of the practice of hesitation and holding back in singing in such a way that ‘part of a note is taken away and given to another’ (...

Article

Al rovescio  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(It.: ‘upside down’, ‘back to front’).

A term that can refer either to Inversion or to Retrograde motion. Haydn called the minuet of the Piano Sonata in A h XVI:26 Minuetto al rovescio: after the trio the minuet is directed to be played backwards (retrograde motion). In the Serenade for Wind in C minor no. in Köchel, 1862; for items not in 1862 edn, no. from 2/1905 or 3/1937 given. ...

Article

Alfabeto  

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
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2001

Article

Aliquot  

Howard Mayer Brown

revised by Clive Greated

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

A mathematical term meaning ‘contained in another a certain number of times without leaving any remainder’ (OED); for example, 2 is an aliquot part of 6. The wavelengths of the harmonic partials of a tone are thus aliquot parts of the fundamental wavelength. Aliquot strings are Sympathetic strings...

Article

All'ottava  

Ebenezer Prout

revised by David Fallows

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

[all'8va] (It.: ‘at the octave’).

An instruction to play an octave above the written pitch if the sign is placed above the notes (sometimes specified as ottava alta, or sopra); if an octave lower is intended, this is indicated by placing the sign below the notes or by specifying with ottava bassa or sotta...