Análisis melódico de los patrones interrogativos de habla espontánea del portugués de Brasil-Estado de São Paulo

Aquest article es deriva de la recerca per a l’obtenció del títol de mestrat i té com a objectiu presentar tres models d’entonació interrogativa del portugués de Brasil de parla espontània de l'estat de São Paulo: (1) inflexió final ascendent (+ 20% ~ + 30%); (2a) inflexió final amb nucli elevat i cos pla; (2b) inflexió final amb nucli elevat i cos ascendent; i (3) inflexió final ascendent-descendent. Per a aquesta determinació, es va utilitzar el mètode descrit i presentat com a protocol per Cantero i Font-Rotchés (2009), Anàlisi Melòdica de la Parla (Melodic Analysis of Speech – MAS).

Tonal Ambiguity in Popular Music’s Axis Progressions

The harmonic progression of aFCG (Am–F–C–G) and its transpositions constitute one rotation of what I callAxis progressions, namely progressions that begin with one of these four chords and cycle through the others in order, hence the Axis-a, -F, -C, and -G, respectively. Of these four progressions, the a-form and C-form, and to a lesser extent, the F-form, have become staples of mainstream popular songs from the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. The a-form is especially noteworthy for being both extremely widespread and tonally ambiguous, in that the perception of its tonality may waver between the major and Aeolian modes. Not only does the progression conflate aspects of the two modes, but it may also vary the degree to which those modes are expressed and their proportion within the progression, resulting in a vast array of possible tonal settings. This article posits that tonality in these settings depends primarily on the melodic content of the progression. A methodology for melodic analysis is then presented and applied to a number of examples of Axis-a (as well as some Axis-F) progressions, to demonstrate how diverse its settings can be.

Melodic patterns of absolute interrogative utterances in northern German spontaneous speech

The present paper deals with the description and characterization of the melodic patterns of absolute interrogative utterances in northern German spontaneous speech from an intonation and semantic-pragmatic point of view. This research has been carried out based on 246 absolute questions from spontaneous speech settings by multiple speakers of different gender, age, and education by applying the Melodic Analysis of Speech (MAS) method developed by Cantero (2002,

MELODIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH (MAS): APLICACIONES EN LA COMPARACIÓN DE LENGUAS

En este artículo, presentamos un análisis comparativo de la entonación de las preguntas absolutas del español, del catalán y del portugués de Brasil a partir de las investigaciones que se han llevado a cabo en los últimos años por el grupo Entonación y Habla de la Universitat de Barcelona. Se trata de una comparación formal entre los diversos patrones que utiliza cada lengua para producir este tipo de preguntas. Para realizar esta investigación, nos hemos basado en el método Melodic Analysis of Speech (MAS), descrito por Cantero (2002), revisado y ampliado por Font-Rotchés (2007) y, posteriormente, establecido por Cantero y Font-Rotchés (2009), después de haber sido aplicado en distintas investigaciones sobre descripción de la entonación de distintas lenguas e interlenguas.

The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories

In recent years Hugo Riemann's ideas have thoroughly captured the music-theoretical imagination, both in the United States and abroad. Neo-Riemannian theory has proven particularly adept at explaining features of chromatic music where other theoretical approaches have failed, and thereby established itself as the leading theoretical approach of our time. This book brings together a group of proponents of Riemannian and neo-Riemannian theory for an exploration of the music-analytical, systematic, and historical aspects of this new field. It elucidates key aspects of the field, draws connections between Riemann's original ideas and current thought, and suggests new applications and avenues for further study. A number of articles in this book suggest connections to other fields of inquiry, such as cognitive and mathematical music theory, as well as applications in the field of metric or melodic analysis. The selection of articles is complemented by several of Hugo Riemann's key original texts, many of which appear in English translation for the first time, and is rounded off by a glossary of key concepts for easy reference.

Riemann and Melodic Analysis

This article discusses Riemann's Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien or “Studies in Folk-Musical Tonality”. While his study at a glance seemed to contradict his earlier beliefs on tonality as a natural and universal system, his study however, sought to reinforce the natural basis of the tonal system by looking and examining non-European repertoires. Riemann's Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien is unique among his studies in that it is his only treatise that does not start out from the assumption of tonal triadic harmonies; instead, it approaches musical structures from a strictly melodic angle. In this article, the focus is on Riemann's melodic analysis and evolutionary history of scalar models. It focuses on his analysis of pentatonicism and tetrachords. In his Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien, Riemann is generally careful not to commit to a chronology, but supplies instead heuristic links between structural stages. While his explanation of tetrachords as three-note fragments of pentatonic scales with infixed pien is historically doubtful, his study nevertheless allowed him to examine all scalar systems as combinations of these two principles. Thus, his study on folk music has been pressed into service to represent a middle ground between strict pentatonicism and modern diatonism.

Carl Nielsen's 'Folk-like' Songs and the 'Danish National Tone'

The notion of ‘Danishness’ remains a sensitive issue in Denmark, not only in reference to music, but also within the broader socio-political arena, in part because of the tensions caused by the influx of Middle-Eastern immigrants. The recent public debate, rash of publications on national identity, and creation of a Danish cultural canon are surely no coincidence. Against this backdrop, it is perhaps not surprising that Karen Vestergard and Ida-Marie Vorre’s 2006 study on Danishness in Nielsen’s folk-like songs sparked controversy, since the authors conclude that there is actually nothing inherently Danish about them, challenging the conventional wisdom that Nielsen’s folkelige songs express the ‘Danish national tone’. Yet even if one cannot verify Danish traits in these songs, it is possible to separate features of the European folk song tradition from Nielsen’s distinctive compositional practices. For example, whereas the songs’ folk-like character is mostly concentrated in the melody, their expressive quality derives largely from the harmonic language, an aspect not considered by Vestergaard and Vorre in their purely melodic analysis. Indeed, many songs manifest in miniature the shifting diatonicism that has been found to thwart expectation in Nielsen’s large-scale compositions. So even if these songs do not exhibit uniquely Danish traits, they do bear Nielsen’s stamp. This begs the question: if a country’s foremost composer has written songs that, for various extrinsic reasons, have become part of the collective folk heritage, cannot his stylistic characteristics, by extension, be considered nationalistic? Perhaps there was no Danish national tone before Nielsen, but over time, specifically through association with his music, these traits have come to represent Danishness, a perspective I argue in this article.

Aliens in disguise: Byzantine and Gallican chants in the Latin liturgy

Comparison of a considerable number of Gregorian sources dating from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries reveals a handful of Mass Proper items that do not belong to the standard repertory and show possible ties with the Byzantine and/or Gallican traditions. These pieces are not recorded in most of the earliest French and German sources of the Gregorian tradition. Some of them seem to have been composed in Italy (but not in Rome), while others would appear to have Eastern or Frankish ties. Comparative melodic analysis, along with the discussion of their position in the liturgical year, discloses insights about their origin, date, routes of transmission and the ways to compare chants belonging to different liturgical families.