Relationships of Symmetrical Pitch-Class Sets and Stravinsky's Metaphor of Polarity
1982; Perspectives of New Music; Volume: 21; Issue: 1/2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/832874
ISSN2325-7180
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis
ResumoStravinsky's well-known remarks on polar in Poetics of Music delivered in French in 1939-40 at Harvard University concern both music in general and his own works: Our chief concern is not so much what is known as as what one might term polar of sound, of an interval, or even of a complex of tones... All music being nothing but a succession of impulses and repose, it is easy to see that drawing together and separation of poles of in a way determine respiration of music. In view of fact that our poles of are no longer within closed system was diatonic system, we can bring poles together without being compelled to conform to exigencies of tonality.' Stravinsky's metaphors of are suggestive, yet puzzling, for according to Berger, polarity is a word which cannot accurately be applied (as [Stravinsky] applies it) to one thing without its opposite.2 However, in context of his works this idea of poles of attraction, or polarity, may be correlated with relationships of paired, transpositionally-related pitch-class structures. Moreover, his metaphor of the drawing together and separation of poles of attraction corresponds to changes in transposition relationships of paired sets or of paired intervals within a set. These changes often feature a developmental expansion and contraction of transposition distance of paired elements. Implicit in idea of a pole is dynamic interaction of a pair of equivalent structures (e.g., either extremity of an axis of a sphere, or either of two terminals of an electric cell or ends of a magnet). The idea of has suggested a gravitational pull or a tonality by assertion to several writers3 as well as an equilibrium often discussed as a harmonic principle (e.g., Pousseur's idea of maintained tension4). In characterizing tritone relationships of Petrouchka chord Berger has proposed that a necessary condition of polarity is the denial of priority to a single pitch-class precisely for purpose of not deflecting from priority of a
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