The Problem of Prolongation in "Tonal" Music: Terminology, Perception, and Expressive Meaning

Larson, S. B.

doi:10.2307/843763

Cited by 48 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…226-227), and "Tonality may thus be defined as prolonged motion within the framework of a single key-determining progression, constituting the ultimate structural framework of the whole piece" (p. 227). This quote, and the work of later theorists such as Larson (1997) and Väisälä (2002), suggests that prolongation is not confined to the "high art" of "commonpractice" composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. The idea of "unfolding of a basic sonority, expressing tonality in the horizontal plane" may also be applied to related ("pretonal," "posttonal") music.…”

Section: Larson (1997) Continuedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Straus (1987, cited by Larson, 1997), Prolongation is an idea of extraordinary power. It has afforded remarkable insights into common-practice music, enabling us to hear through the musical surface to the remoter structural levels and ultimately to the tonic triad itself (p. 1).…”

Section: Incorporating Schenker Into Music Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a priming paradigm, for example, Bigand, Tillman, Poulin-Charronnat, and Manderlier (2005) found that response times in consonant/dissonant judgments are shorter for tonic than for nontonic targets. Larson (1997) introduced psychological ways of thinking into the music-theoretic discourse surrounding this issue:…”

Section: The Psychology Of Prolongationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Major-Minor Tonality, Schenkerian Prolongation, and Emotion: A commentary on Huron and Davis (2012)

Parncutt

2013

EMR

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On average, melodies in minor keys have smaller intervals between successive tones than melodies in major keys-consistent with the emotional difference between major and minor (Huron, 2008). Huron and Davis (2012) additionally showed that a part of this difference is inherent in the structure of major and minor scales, in combination with typical patterns of transition between scale steps: if one takes a typical major melody and lowers scale steps 3 and 6 by a semitone, then the average interval size is optimally reduced. I present an alternative theory of the origin of major and minor scales/keys and their emotional connotations. Huron's (2006) data on scale-step transitions in typical melodies is consistent with Schenker's (1922Schenker's ( , 1935 idea that a piece of tonal music can be interpreted as a prolongation of its tonic triad (mediated by the Ursatz). The emotional difference between major and minor may ultimately and primarily depend on the third of the tonic triad in the psychological background. Major music may tend toward positive valence simply because emotionally positive music is more common than emotionally negative music, and major triads and keys are more common than minor. Minor music may tend toward negative valence simply because scale degrees 3 and 6 sound lower than expected, consistent with emotional cues in speech (Huron, 2008).Submitted 2012 October 20; accepted 12 December 2012. KEYWORDS: major, minor, emotion, Schenker, prolongation WHY are major and minor scales like they are (with a specific ordering of tones and semitones) and not completely different? Why are major keys associated with positive emotional valence (happiness, contentment, serenity, grace, tenderness, elation, joy, victory, majesty…), and minor with negative emotional valence (sadness, anger, fear, tension, solemnity, lament, tragedy…)? For Meyer (1956), "the minor mode is not only associated with intense feeling in general but with the delineation of sadness, suffering and anguish in particular" (p. 227). Why? One would think that music psychologists would have answered these apparently simple questions by now. Evidently we have not, but things are moving in a promising direction. The contribution by Huron and Davis (2012) is a significant step towards a new explanation, and it also has interesting broader implications. In this extended commentary, I will present a new approach that builds upon their work.Consider first the origin of the ordering of tones and semitones in major and minor scales. I addressed that question in Parncutt (2011a). My basic assumption was that any passage of music in a major or minor key may be considered a Schenkerian prolongation of its tonic triad. I will examine this idea in detail below. For the moment, allow me to quickly consider the relationship between tones of the tonic triad and scale degrees in major-minor tonality (MmT).In Parncutt (2011a), I proposed that scale degrees in major and minor keys may be divided into three categories: the tones of the tonic triad, ...

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Section: Larson (1997) Continuedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Incorporating Schenker Into Music Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Major-Minor Tonality, Schenkerian Prolongation, and Emotion: A commentary on Huron and Davis (2012)

Parncutt

2013

EMR

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“…Incluso la participación pasiva en la audición compromete la activación de regiones del cerebro que se vinculan al movimiento (Lakoff, & Johnson, 1999;Janata, & Grafton, 2003;). Será la correlación entre diferentes tipos de conocimiento básico en las interacciones de los individuos en entornos cotidianos, entre diferentes dominios de la experiencia y el dominio musical, lo que llevará a procesos metafóricos de aprehensión de significado gracias a la flexibilidad cognitiva y social que nos caracteriza como especie (Guck 1991;Zbikowsky, 1997Zbikowsky, , 1997Zbikowsky, -1998Zbikowsky, , 1998Zbikowsky, , 2002Saslaw 1996 Saslaw , 1997 Saslaw -1998Larson 1997; Brower 2000; Cross, 2004).Así, el significado en general y el musical en particular, deben entenderse como fundados en la humanidad (Johnson, 1987): nuestra capacidad para construir significado, basada en las estructuras imaginativas por las que aprehendemos la realidad. Y ese significado que lo que atribuimos será básico para que la motivación lleve a un desencadenamiento de respuestas a lo escuchado, pero también a la inversa, la motivación hacia lo escuchado será lo que desencadene diferentes emociones en nosotros.…”

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Motivación Y Emoción en Música. Estado De La Cuestión Y Aportaciones Para La Innovación Educativa

Cantero

2018

Artseduca

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ResumenAunque la Educación Musical presenta un campo reducido de estudios de investigación, los aportes de las últimas décadas parecen indicar un cambio significativo en relación al interés que están desentrañando, así como en lo que se refiere a los temas que son objeto de estudio en ella. En este artículo se presenta una aproximación al conocimiento educativo sobre Motivación y Música que se ha ido aportando a lo largo del tiempo en diferentes países, acercándonos para ello también y desde la Neurociencia al cercano constructo de Emoción y Música. Se concreta todo ello en el campo de la Piscología de la Música como disciplina que está comenzando la andadura hacia su consideración como campo propio y diferenciado de conocimiento. Así mismo, desde estas aportaciones generales y particulares, se presentan propuestas para la innovación que pueden ayudar al docente en Música en cualquiera de sus ámbitos y niveles. Palabras claveMúsica · Motivación · Emoción · Educación · Innovación Motivación y emoción en música.Estado de la cuestión y aportaciones para la innovación educativa Key words Music · Motivation · Emotion · Education · Innovation IntroducciónLos temas de estudio que ha abarcado la investigación sobre enseñanza y aprendizaje en música, sin duda alguna, y como bien afirma Sloboda (2012), han sufrido un cambio y un progreso considerable. Desde los años 70 y 80 del siglo pasado hasta la actualidad, estos temas han estado centrados según la década en la que nos detengamos en aspectos como procesos básicos, desarrollo de habilidades musicales, música real en la actualidad o motivación y emoción. A estos temas se une una perspectiva crítica del fenómeno educativo en música que pueden englobarse en la desmitificación del concepto de talento y la consideración de lo emocional, junto a lo motivacional, y no sólo las habilidades técnicas, como componentes ya más que esenciales en el ámbito pedagógico. Pero, además, incluso el tratamiento de los mismos ha sufrido transformaciones en disciplinas que, desde el respaldo de la Psicología, han encontrado en la multidisciplinariedad y las metodologías cualitativas nuevos caminos antes impensables (Casas-Mas, 2008).Desde el punto de vista etimológico, la palabra motivación tiene su origen en el verbo latino "movere", que significa mover. Es, por tanto, lo que mueve y está vinculada a la acción física y mental (Achtziger, & Collwitzer 2008), puesto que impulsa y guía la acción; esto es, da la energía para actuar y hace que la acción se encamine hacia una meta (McClelland, 1985;Elliot, 2008;Thrash, & Hurst, 2008). Por lo tanto, el comportamiento es un buen indicador para medir la motivación (Reeve, 1992;Montero & Huertas, 2003;Heckhausen, & Heckhausen, 2008) y algunas de sus medidas son la preferencia o elección entre alternativas, la latencia del comportamiento ante el estímulo, el esfuerzo o aplicación de recursos físicos y cognitivos para el desarrollo de la tarea, la persistencia en ella y los indicadores expresivos de placer o displacer de las emociones que acompañan la...

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“…Importantly, both hierarchies can be understood as cognitive templates imposed upon music by listeners, rather than actual phenomena present in musical signals (Huron, 2006). Metrical patterns need not be consistently emphasized with relatively strong and weak accents in order to be perceived (London, 2004) just as tonally stable pitches do not need to be emphasized in order for a tonal hierarchy to be understood (Larson, 1997). In fact, much evidence points to listeners imposing hierarchies with very little musical context in both metric (Brochard et al, 2003;Desain & Honing, 2003;Palmer & Krumhansl, 1990) and tonal domains (Cuddy & Badertscher, 1987;Smith & Schmuckler, 2004).…”

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Relationships Between Tonal Stability and Metrical Accent in Monophonic Contexts

White¹

2017

EMR

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Recent corpus analyses have provided evidence for interactions between tonal and metric hierarchies by illustrating that tonally stable pitches occur disproportionately often on strong metrical positions while tonally unstable pitches occur more frequently on weaker metrical positions. This study begins to investigate whether this observed property is salient to listeners' identification of metrical accents: by presenting participants with tonally-determined but metrically ambiguous beat patterns, we ask how tonal hierarchies might influence listeners' interpretation of these metricalaccent patterns (as measured via a tapping task). In Experiment 1, participants heard patterns alternating tonally stable and unstable pitches, and it was found that tonal stability did not affect metric interpretations. In Experiments 2 and 3, listeners heard an atonal artificial hierarchy prefaced by an exposure session using music generated by this artificial hierarchy; exposure did not influence the subsequent tapping task. Flipping the paradigm, in Experiment 4, participants heard a metrically defined but tonallyambiguous melody, and selected the most appropriate chord. The metrical context affected participants' harmonization choices. Although a tendency to align strong beats with chord tones accounted for some of the data, further analysis shows that changing the metrical context influenced chord choices, providing evidence for a joint tonal-metric hierarchy.

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The Problem of Prolongation in "Tonal" Music: Terminology, Perception, and Expressive Meaning

Cited by 48 publications

References 8 publications

Major-Minor Tonality, Schenkerian Prolongation, and Emotion: A commentary on Huron and Davis (2012)

Major-Minor Tonality, Schenkerian Prolongation, and Emotion: A commentary on Huron and Davis (2012)

Motivación Y Emoción en Música. Estado De La Cuestión Y Aportaciones Para La Innovación Educativa

Relationships Between Tonal Stability and Metrical Accent in Monophonic Contexts

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