Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 1

Varieties of Tone Presence: Process, Gesture, and the Excessive Polyvalence of Pitch in

Post-Tonal Music

Aaron Harcus

The Graduate Center, CUNY

aaronharcus@gmail.com

Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory

November 6, 2014

Milwaukee, WI

Outline of Talk

I. Introduction: Perceptual Presence

II. Traditional Approaches to Tone Presence (“Chunk and Match”)

III. Phenomenology of “Now” and the Embedded Character of Temporal Experience

IV. A Comparison of the “same” chord in Bartók and Schoenberg

I. Perceptual Presence

Phenomenon of Presence: “How the world shows up”; online (as opposed to offline) processing

in the various sensory modalities.

Main Thesis: The question of how tones show up for experience (their presence) is dependent

on getting an accurate description of the structure of temporal experience.

Secondary Thesis: The focus on principles of segmentation in music analysis, theory, and

cognition has virtually ruled out the possibility of a theory of tone presence because it begins

with a faulty conception of temporal experience.

Minimal requirement for an adequate description of tone presence:

Perceptual experience is (Noë 2012) transactional in nature: Our perceptual experience registers

both how things are and our relation to how things are.

Included in my conception of “relation to how things are” is understanding.

Take either one of these aspects of perceptual experience away and you no longer have

perceptual experience.

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 2

Example 1. Bartók, String Quartet no. 5, second movement, mm. 1-14.

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 3

b. Interpretation 1 of mm. 11-12 c. Interpretation 2

Example 1. Continued.

aa

D♭M scale degrees

7̂4̂3̂2̂1̂

Major scale degrees

7̂4̂3̂2̂1̂

Tonic: Root of Major Triad

cseg <01> m9

Tonic: CM Triad

Content of Experience:

Assuming absolute pitch, you hear two

layers with distinct tonal

relations/functions in D♭ and C Major.

Root, third, and Fifth of CM triad are all

equally present.

The relation of minor ninth between the

two layers is equally present.

Visual Analogy: An abundance of pitch

relationships all in sharp focus from the

center out to the periphery.

Content of Experience:

Two distinct tonal layers in an

ambiguous relation to one another (thus

the arrow labeled cseg <01>).

Root of tonic triad and scale degree 1

more prominent than other pitches within

their respective layers.

The tonal relations, particularly scale

degree 1, in Violin 1 is much more

focally prominent than the pitch relations

in other layers.

Key to Symbols Used in Examples 1.b-f

Tones are less

present in texture

Filled-in note-heads:

More vivid tone presence

Profiled Tone

Object

Immediate Scope

endowing

profiled object

with conceptual

content

Focally

Prominent Tone

Relationship

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 4

d. Interpretation 3 e. Interpretation 4

f. Interpretation 5, mm. 11-14.

Example 1. Continued.

m9 elaborated

by cseg <0123> P8

Tonic: Major Triad Root Tonic:

M triad

M: 1̂7̂6̂5̂

Root of Major Triad Major

Triad

Up P5

m9 P8

M: sol-la-ti-do

Root of Major Triad

M: do-re-me-fa-ti

Root of Minor Triad

Convergence of two layers

into a single major chord.

Content of Experience:

The motion from m9 between layers to

the octave is focally prominent.

Slightly less prominent is the experience

of two distinct layers converging into

one layer, the Major tonic triad.

The m9 above the tonic root is elaborated

in Violin 1 by a stepwise ascending

figure without any tonal or set-class

implications.

Content of Experience:

Similar to Interpretation 3, but with two

differences: 1) cseg <0123> is heard as scale

degrees 5, 6, 7, 1 in major, and 2) The root of

the major triad is NOT heard as a tonic

chord.

Content of Experience:

Two chords lack tonal focus and the

roots of the chords are still focally

prominent.

The motion up a perfect between the two

chords is focally prominent.

Greater isolation between layers, as the

second instance of the prominent

descending m2 in Violin 1 (E-D♯) does

not resolve into the chordal layer.

Two layers retain their

own distinct…

Growing isolation

between the two layers

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 5

II. Traditional Approaches to Tone Presence (“Chunk and Match”)

Example 2. Schematic Outline of Traditional Approach to Tone Presence (“Chunk and Match”).

III. Phenomenology of “Now” and the Embedded Character of Temporal Experience

How should we characterize Now?

Quote 1 (Noë 2012, 77-78): “What you hear when you experience the temporal extent of the

note are not the sounds that have already passed out of existence…What you experience, rather,

is…the rising of the current sounds out of the past; you hear the current sounds as surging forth

from the past. You hear them as a continuation. This is to say, moving on to a better

approximation, you hear them as having a certain trajectory or arc, as unfolding in accordance

with a definite law or pattern. It is not the past that is present in the current experience;

rather, it is the trajectory or arc that is present now, and of course the arc describes the

relation of what is now to what has already happened (and to what may still happen).

(italics in original, bold my own).

Representational Models:

Schemata (Prototype or

Exemplar-based)

Location (or relative

distance between two

chords) in some quality

space

Grammar (primitives +

rules of combination)

Formal Models

Open-Ended/Subjectively

Autonomous models:

Associative Set

GIS/Transformational

Network

Sonic (S1 and S2)

or Contextual

Criteria (given

two+ segments)

Well-

Formedness

(WFR) and

Preference Rules

(PRs)

Continuous

stream of

music

Principles of

Segmentation

1) “Chunk”: Break

stream up into objects

2) “Match”: Identity

or Best fit between

musical object and

formal model.

3) Tone Presence:

A match is found, a

structural description

assigned (the

propositional light

bulb is turned on),

and the object is

experienced “now.”

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 6

Quote 2 (Hasty 1997, 76): “I suggest that now might be regarded as a continually changing

perspective on becoming. Now is continually changing and ever new, because becoming is ever

new and never fixed or arrested. What has become is fixed and past, but what is past becomes

past only with a new becoming and is past only for what is becoming or will become. By calling

now a perspective I mean that it is a ‘view’ taken on present becoming from the standpoint of the

particular opportunities offered by what has become and what might become. In this way, ‘now’

might be considered most generally as a condition for freedom of action and more specifically as

a condition for feeling rhythm” (emphasis my own).

Example 3. Schematic Representation of the Embedded Character of Temporal Experience.

Two main points regarding Example 3 with respect to tone presence:

1) The past aspect corresponds to what is traditionally identified as the segment;

HOWEVER, it is not the segment (or past aspect) itself that is present to experience;

instead what we hear is the trajectory of the tone object arising out of this segment (“past

aspect”).

2) It is this process of the segment coming into being by virtue of being made past and

relevant for present becoming that helps determine the relevant immediate scope of the

tone object.

Larger, ongoing situation (e.g., phrase formation, topic, gesture, etc.) that impinges on the immediate scope

*The use of the word “aspect” in past and present aspect refers to a suggestion from Hasty 2010 that past,

present and future represent three aspects (or “faces”) of one unified time.

Past Aspect*

tone object

(traditional

“segment”)

Present Aspect

indeterminate

tone object

Immediate Scope

Arc or trajectory of sound (“Now”)

|(beginning) \ (continuation)

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 7

A. Measures 1-6.

B. Analytical Reduction of measures 1-6.

Example 4. String Quartet no. 4, third movement.

Example 5. Schoenberg, Chamber Symphony no. 1, op. 9, Figure 77.

6-32 (024579) [143250]

| \ 6-32 (024579):

stacked fourths

| \ Major diatonic: do-ti

|ti (only realized at this durational level)

| \ la→mi

|(?) \(re?)–\ (do?) |(la?) \(re) \→|

Harcus, “Varieties of Tone Presence” 8

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