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Interacting Pulse Streams in Schoenberg's Atonal Polyphony

1994; Oxford University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/746035

1533-8339

John Roeder,

Neuroscience and Music Perception

This essay presents a rhythmic analytical theory for Schoenberg's middle-period music. It represents polyphony as concurrent “pulse streams” created by regularly recurring accents, and shows how the relations of synchrony that obtain among pulse streams, motives, and textural voices create musical form. The theory is used to analyze “Mondestrunken” and “Columbine” from Pierrot lunaire. The analyses correlate pulse-stream processes to the syntax of the songs' texts, and reveal similarities of rhythmic design in these pieces. They also accommodate the contributions of some often neglected musical dimensions, such as contour and dynamics, to form.