scholarly journals Harmonic Closure: Music Theory and Perception

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burton S. Rosner ◽  
Eugene Narmour

Music theorists have often disagreed about the material variables that determine the perception of harmonic closure. To investigate this controversial topic, we presented subjects with pairs of selected two-chord progressions. The subjects judged which member of each pair seemed more closed. Preferences varied across pairs of cadences and generally obeyed transitivity. Quantitative reformulation of theoretical harmonic variables permitted correlational analysis of the results. Three or four variables, including one or two that reflect learned stylistic structures, best explained our findings. Conventional harmonic factors of scale step, soprano position, and root position demonstrated surprisingly little explanatory power.

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 1221-1228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wanat

This essay analyses the explanatory power of Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky's theory of budgetary incrementalism. By means of sensitivity testing, it demonstrates that inferences to “gaming” or strategic explanations of budgetary incrementalism are not warranted on the basis of correlational analysis.To explain budgetary incrementalism more satisfactorily, recourse is made to concepts and variables explicit in the vocabulary of the budget process participants. When mandatory requests are distinguished from programmatic requests, the differential treatment of the two by Congress is observed to allow good explanation of budgetary relations. In particular, the inexorable but small mandatory request, which is almost automatically granted, is adequate by itself to explain why requests always increase and why one year's appropriation surpasses the previous one.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Daphne Tan

Abstract This article examines Ernst Kurth’s critical engagement with the ideas of Hugo Riemann and his eventual reformulation of harmonic dualism in dynamic terms. The principle of “dynamic dualism” appears most cogently in Musikpsychologie ([1931] 1947). After discussing the broader psychological movement within which this book emerged, I outline the aims and audience of Musikpsychologie and provide a detailed discussion of the dynamic dualism Kurth articulates therein. I then return to the origin of Kurth’s fascination with dualism, namely to Riemann, tracing points of intersection between the two figures across several decades. I suggest that Kurth’s displeasure with Riemann’s theories is symptomatic of a broader philosophical disagreement over the explanatory power of music theory and its relation to psychology at the time.


1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Narmour

Hierarchic analysis in music necessarily separates form from content. However, in active listening, the two are indivisible. To illustrate this, I first analyze in Part 1 the opening movement in Mozart's Sonata K. 282 from the top down, using traditional methods in music theory. Arriving at the manifest level, I then dissect the music from the bottom up, relying on the implication-realization model (Narmour, 1977,1989,1990,1991a, 1992). The contrasting perspectives reveal in great detail some of the movement's richly complex structuring. More generally, they confirm the inextricable feedback between parametric content and the meaning of form, specifically with respect to the contrary functions of closure and nonclosure. Following these analyses, Part 2 forges a synthesis by developing an implicative theory of analogical structures for melody, harmony, duration, and meter. Because, in terms of bottom-up processing, the analytical symbology for tracking structures is commensurable, we can, in all four primary parameters, weight similarity (aa), difference (ab), closure (stability), and nonclosure (implication) with comparable numbers. Further, by adding in some essential stylistic properties from the top down (scale step, diatonic pitch set, tonal cadential closure), we are able to represent the overall rhythmic shape of the first phrase in a single twodimensional graph. Thereby, we recapture from hierarchic analysis the perceptual sense that, in on-line listening, form and content are synthetically one.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Clampitt ◽  
Thomas Noll

The theory of well-formed modes is a modal refinement of the theory of well-formed scales. The mathematical approach is based on various results from the subdiscipline of algebraic combinatorics on words. Section 1 provides anchors and motivations for this investigation both in music theory and in mathematics and traces some earlier cross-connections. An overview of the theory is presented in terms of a dichotomy betweengenericandspecificlevels of description. Section 2 presents a first group of basic theoretical results. Height-width duality mediates between scale step patterns and fifth-fourth folding patterns. Both are encoded through divided words, on two-letter alphabets, such asaaba|aabandyx|yxyxy. The lettersaandbdenote ascending whole and half steps, and the letters x and y denote ascending perfect fifths and descending perfect fourths, respectively. These words are well-formed words; i.e., in the language of word theory, they areconjugatetoChristoffelwords and inherit a duality that is akin toChristoffel duality. Qualitative differences between the modal varieties of the same underlying scale can be detected and formalized through word-theoretical arguments. For example, a property we refer to asdivider incidencecharacterizes modes corresponding tostandardwords.Positivestandard words generalize the ascending authentic Ionian mode.Sturmian morphismsprovide a transformational meta-language for the study of well-formed modes. Section 3 revisits Jacques Handschin’s concept of tone character and defends it on the basis of the mathematical results against two criticisms that had been raised by Carl Dahlhaus. Section 4 explores distinctions among the modes based upon considerations of word theory, especially divider incidence and concomitant properties that support major-minor tonality. A concluding section connects these arguments with other lines of investigation.


Author(s):  
Barbara A. Wood

A controversial topic in the study of structure-property relationships of toughened polymer systems is the internal cavitation of toughener particles resulting from damage on impact or tensile deformation.Detailed observations of the influence of morphological characteristics such as particle size distribution on deformation mechanisms such as shear yield and cavitation could provide valuable guidance for selection of processing conditions, but TEM observation of damaged zones presents some experimental difficulties.Previously published TEM images of impact fractured toughened nylon show holes but contrast between matrix and toughener is lacking; other systems investigated have clearly shown cavitated impact modifier particles. In rubber toughened nylon, the physical characteristics of cavitated material differ from undamaged material to the extent that sectioning of heavily damaged regions by cryoultramicrotomy with a diamond knife results in sections of greater than optimum thickness (Figure 1). The detailed morphology is obscured despite selective staining of the rubber phase using the ruthenium trichloride route to ruthenium tetroxide.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 181-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Allbutt ◽  
Jonathan Ling ◽  
Thomas M. Heffernan ◽  
Mohammed Shafiullah

Allbutt, Ling, and Shafiullah (2006) and Allbutt, Shafiullah, and Ling (2006) found that scores on self-report measures of visual imagery experience correlate primarily with the egoistic form of social-desirable responding. Here, three studies are reported which investigated whether this pattern of findings generalized to the ratings of imagery vividness in the auditory modality, a new version of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire ( Marks, 1995 ), and reports of visual thinking style. The measure of social-desirable responding used was the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 2002 ). Correlational analysis replicated the pattern seen in our earlier work and of the correlations with the egoistic bias, the correlation with vividness of visual imagery was largest and significant, the correlation with visual thinking style next largest and approached significance, and the correlation with vividness of auditory imagery was the smallest and not significant. The size of these correlations mirrored the extent to which the three aspects of imagery were valued by participants.


2013 ◽  
Vol 221 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Jost ◽  
Wouter De Baene ◽  
Iring Koch ◽  
Marcel Brass

The role of cue processing has become a controversial topic in research on cognitive control using task-switching procedures. Some authors suggested a priming account to explain switch costs as a form of encoding benefit when the cue from the previous trial is repeated and hence challenged theories that attribute task-switch costs to task-set (re)configuration. A rich body of empirical evidence has evolved that indeed shows that cue-encoding repetition priming is an important component in task switching. However, these studies also demonstrate that there are usually substantial “true” task-switch costs. Here, we review this behavioral, electrophysiological, and brain imaging evidence. Moreover, we describe alternative approaches to the explicit task-cuing procedure, such as the usage of transition cues or the task-span procedure. In addition, we address issues related to the type of cue, such as cue transparency. We also discuss methodological and theoretical implications and argue that the explicit task-cuing procedure is suitable to address issues of cognitive control and task-set switching.


1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 573-574
Author(s):  
JAMES LULL
Keyword(s):  

1979 ◽  
Vol 24 (10) ◽  
pp. 748-750
Author(s):  
K. T. STRONGMAN
Keyword(s):  

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