Tonal pitch space
By: Fred Lerdahl.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 411
Subjects: Music theory; Tonality; Musical pitch; Musical analysis
Description: "Tonal Pitch Space builds on, and in many ways completes, the project of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's influential A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Like the earlier volume, it is both an original music-theoretic treatise and a contribution to the cognitive science of music.".

"After presenting some modifications to Lerdahl and Jackendoff's original framework, this volume develops a quantitative model of listeners' intuitions of the relative distances of pitches, chords, and regions from a given tonic. The model is used to derive prolongational structure, to trace paths through tonal space at multiple prolongational levels, and to compute patterns of tonal tension and attraction as musical events unfold.

These investigations lead to a fresh theory of tonal function and reveal an underlying parallel between tonal and metrical structures. Later portions of the book apply these ideas to both highly chromatic tonal and atonal music. In response to stylistic differences, the derived shape of pitch space changes and psychoacoustic features become increasingly important, while underlying features of the theory remain constant, reflecting unvarying features of the musical mind.".

"This integrated theory has extraordinary musical and intellectual scope. It is illustrated throughout by analyses of music from Bach to Wagner to Schoenberg. Frequent connections are made to music-theoretic and psychological literature. The consideration of pitch-space paths illuminates issues of musical narrativity, and the treatment of tonal tension and attraction provides a technical basis for studies of musical expectation and expression.

Music theorists will be interested in the volume's many theoretical innovations, musicologists in its account of historically evolving tonal spaces, composers in its potentialities for structuring musical materials, computer musicians in its progress toward modeling the complexities of musical listening, cognitive psychologists in its empirical hypotheses and predictions, and philosophers and critics in its implications for a theory of musical emotion."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 393-404) and index.