Matt Chiu and Derek J. Myler, Editors
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Editors’ Note (i)
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Articles
Diego Cubero | Blurred Harmonies in Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms (1–25)
HTML & PDF —— Abstract This article argues that Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms gave their music a blurry, Romantic quality by distorting well-known harmonic progressions. After identifying the basic progression that underpins the music, the analyses discuss the rhythmic dislocations that cause chords to overlap and merge together. The essay bridges a gap between an important aspect of the Romantic aesthetic and our theoretical understanding of Schumann’s and Brahms’s harmonic vocabulary.
Matthew Ferrandino | Multi-Centric Complexes in Pop-Rock Music (27–43)
HTML & PDF —— Abstract In this article, I explore the availability of multiple pitch centers in pop-rock songs that emerge from the application of what John Covach has called “positional listening.” I demonstrate how different methods of listening and analysis have a drastic effect on our interpretation of a song’s pitch center. Adapting Robert Bailey’s term “double-tonic complex,” I refer to songs that exhibit multivalent centers as “multi-centric complexes.” Through several examples I demonstrate how different instruments—such as lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, or bass—can present their own, sometimes competing, centers. I use a variety of listening strategies and analytical methods in order to demonstrate and justify multiple centric interpretations that emerge when a listener compares a single instrument’s projected center with others in pop-rock songs. Allowing for a “thick” interpretation of a pop-rock song’s pitch center not only celebrates pop-rock’s oft-cited tonal complexity, but also the overlooked complexity of the listening subject. Who is listening? How? And why?
Anabel Maler | Listening to Phrase Structure and Formal Function in Post-Tonal Music (45–68)
HTML & PDF —— Abstract This article adapts Classical notions of formal function for the purpose of proposing a listener-centered theory of phrase formation in post-tonal repertoires. It contends that formal function is an emergent property of music through which a listener actively shapes musical organization in time. The result of this approach is a view of musical form in which the listener and composer mutually construct the significant formal units of a musical work through their interactions, a perspective particularly well adapted to the challenges presented by post-tonal music. In order to show how phrase structure in post-tonal music emerges through these formal affordances, the article analyzes in detail several passages from Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5, Luigi Dallapiccola's Dialoghi, and Anton Webern's Three Little Pieces Op. 11, No. 1. The theory of phrase presented here encourages an understanding of phrase as fundamentally relational and constantly mutable.
Benjamin K. Wadsworth and Simon Needle | Rhyme, Metrical Tension, and Formal Ambiguity in Kendrick Lamar’s Flow (69–94) HTML & PDF —— Abstract The flow of Kendrick Lamar veers between old-school, metrically rigid and new-school, prose-like rhymes. Through manipulating rhymes within 4/4 time, Lamar increases and decreases affective tension, suggests formal ambiguity, and highlights changes in point of view and literary topic. Although rhyme manipulations have been discussed by Kyle Adams (2009), Mitch Ohriner (2019a), and others as sources of formal contrasts, their effects on affective tension, relaxation, and formal functionality have been unspecified. In this essay, we propose a more comprehensive model of rhyme-based tension and relaxation, then apply it to questions of formal norms and ambiguities in Lamar’s songs. Analyses of songs across Lamar’s output demonstrate how changing degrees of metrical tension suggest comprehensible formal subsections within verses. Our methodology codifies previously unnamed formal categories, highlights formal similarities with pop-rock repertoires, reflects the aims of Lamar’s conscious rap aesthetic, and illuminates Lamar’s lyrics.
Reviews
Emily Milius | A Blaze of Light in Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice, by Victoria Malawey, Oxford University Press, 2020 (95–101)
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Stephen S. Hudson | Making Sense of Recordings: How Cognitive Processing of Recorded Sound Works, by Mads Walther-Hansen, Oxford University Press, 2020 (103–108)
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