Music 103

LIST OF TERMS DISCUSSED IN CLASS

Spring 2003

• Additive rhythmic system or Bulgarian rhythms or Aksak rhythms
  Rhythmic system based on a fast pulse whose units are grouped in patterns of larger, uneven units (eg. 4+2+3) which are repeated. Bartok found this kind of rhythms first in the folklore of Bulgaria and named them Bulgarian Rhythms only to discover later that they are present all over South-Eastern Europe and in many other non-Western musical cultures. Aksak is the Turkish word denoting this kind of rhythms.

  Divisionary system

  Rhythmic system used in Western music in which a larger duration is divided i(and sub-divided) into even parts.

  Expressionism

  Trend in the arts which seeks to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. Usually exaggerating such emotions and insisting on fantastic, violent, and sometimes shocking events.

  Fibonacci series of numbers; golden mean

  Series of numbers attributed to Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (died cca. 1250) in which the sum of any two adjacent numbers produces the next one in the series: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ...... The ratio between two adjacent numbers of the series (eg. 8/13) is a close approximation of the golden mean ratio which is given by the expression: a/b = b/(a+b) = 0.6182... It was used extensively in architecture, painting and music since ancient Greece though Renaissance and by 20th. century artists. Composers such as Bartok, Debussy, Xenakis, etc. are known for the use of this device.

  Heterophony

  Musical texture in which two or more variants of the same melodic pattern are presented simultaneously.

  Impressionism

  Trend in the arts which seeks to suggest, to evoke subjective and sensory impressions or subtle moods rather then recreating an objective reality.

  Ison

  Greek term used in liturgical music: pedal tone or drone.

  Modes with limited transpositions

  Term coined by Olivier Messiaen; refers to scales made out of repeating patterns of intervals which allow for only a limited (1-6) numbers of transpositions before repeating the original set of pitches.

  Non-retrogradable rhythm

  A rhythm which is the same when read/performed backward. Term usually mentioned in connection with Olivier Messiaen's music and theories.

  Octatonic scale

  Scale with eight sounds per octave arranged in a pattern of alternating steps and half steps. Similar to some of Messiaen's modes with limited transpositions it was used extensively by some late 19th century composers (Rimsky Korsakov) or early 20th century composers, notably Stravinsky.

  Parlando-rubato

  Rhythmic system encountered in East-European and other non-Western musical cultures in the context of lyric, melismatic melodies with an improvisatory character; similar to a melodic recitative.

  Pentatonic scales

  Scales with five sounds per octave.

  Pien

  Mobil sound in a scale/mode. The same degree of the scale may appear with different alterations, usually in different octaves or at different times in the same melody.

  Polychord

  An aggregate of two or more recognizable chords played simultaneously.

  Polyrhythms

  Superposition of two (or more) rhythmic patterns or meters

  Polytonality/Polymodality

  Superposition of two (or more) tonalities. Two or more streams of coherent progressions each in a different tonality (or in a different mode).

  Pre-pentatonic scales

  Scales with less than five sounds per octave.

  Sieves

  Device used by Iannis Xenakis who introduced the term. Refers to scales build by applying basic logical operations (union, intersection, and complement) to equivalence classes modulo m (numbers which, when divided by another number m give the same remnant). Usually scale patterns which do not repeat at the octave. In a more general way, sieves are logical filters which can be applied not only to pitches but also to rhythms or any other musical parameters.

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