RUMS Colloquium (11/13/2017)

Dear RUMS Member,

You are cordially invited to our monthly colloquium on Monday, November 13, 2017 at 2 pm, in the upstairs conference room of the Mabel Smith Douglass Library. Please note the change in date and time from our usual colloquium schedule. Food and beverages will be served. The following two papers will be presented by a graduate student in the music theory program and professor of musicology, respectively, at Rutgers University:

Patrice Earle: “Neutral Tonality: The Theoretical and Compositional Analysis of the 24-tone Equal-Temperament System”

Dr. Rebecca Cypess: “Basso continuo at the Harpsichord in Early 17^th-Century Italy: Recovering Traces of Embodied Knowledge”

We still have openings for our spring colloquia. If you are interested in presenting a paper at one of these meetings, please email rutgersmusicologicalsociety@gmail.com.

We hope to see you there!

Best,

The RUMS Colloquium Committee:

Michael Goetjen (Chair)

Blake Ritchie (Vice-Chair)

Michael Nokes

“Neutral Tonality:

The Theoretical and Compositional Analysis of the 24-tone Equal-Temperament System”

This paper explores the theoretical and compositional analysis of the Quarter-tone system by using equal-temperament in what will be called the 24-TET, or 24-tone equal-temperament system. The standard 12-TET, or Twelve-tone equal-temperament system, which evolved its quantity of tones through the intonation of stacked perfect fifths and its quality of tones through the temperament of equal alignment between all tones, is categorized as a subset of the 24-TET. The 12-TET will be the standard model for comparing analyses of set theory and diatonic set theory to the 24-TET. Tonal theory gives a structural hierarchy to systems, scales, and chords, with importance on tone selection, structure, and relationship, such as diatonic set theory.

Through the tuning properties of equal-temperament and modular arithmetic, set theory has been developed under the schematic of 12-TET and uses the Modulo 12 (mod12) system. The processes of producing new tuning systems will be designed to work within theoretical and practical parameters. The basis of these tuning methods will be from books about music theory and acoustics, such as William A. Sethares’s Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (2005), books about set theory, such as Joseph N. Straus’s Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory (2004), and books about diatonic set theory, such as Timothy Johnson’s Foundations of Diatonic Theory: A Mathematically Based Approach to Music Fundamentals (2003). Analytical techniques will then be applied to an original composition arranged in Pure Data (PD) programming-software and scored in Sibelius notation software. The exploration of microtones beyond the 12-TET creates possibilities for not only additional tones but also for entirely new tuning systems.

Basso continuo at the Harpsichord in Early 17^th-Century Italy:

Recovering Traces of Embodied Knowledge

The emergence of basso continuo in Italy around the turn of the seventeenth century reflected profound changes in compositional thought that would persist in the Western tradition for two centuries or more. Yet basso continuo depended as much on the embodied knowledge of skilled instrumentalists as it did on compositional ingenuity. Agostino Agazzari emphasized that continuo players on various instruments needed to harness the intrinsic properties of each, using them idiomatically to respond to the expressive needs of the musical moment.

Approaches to continuo realization at each instrument must have been worked out by players through experimentation and discussion. While evidence of such unwritten practices is obviously lost, I argue that traces of this experimental process among harpsichordists survive in two unlikely sources: Luzzasco Luzzaschi’sMadrigali (1601) and Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccate (1615). Luzzaschi’s madrigals are characterized by the soprano-bass polarity made possible by basso-continuothinking, but its harpsichord accompaniment is written out in tablature, which guides the player’s hands in voice-leading and texture. What Luzzaschi’s text fails to convey are the subtleties of idiomatic arpeggiation and figuration. These factors, however, may be elucidated through the solo keyboard toccatas of Luzzaschi’s student Frescobaldi, which Frescobaldi famously said should be executed “in the manner of modern madrigals.” Like basso continuo accompaniments, Frescobaldi’s toccatas are constructed through the elaboration of schematic chordal frameworks. His performance instructions, which treat idiomatic arpeggiation, ornamental figuration, and suspension of the tactus, bear suggestive implications for continuo playing at the harpsichord, describing an idiomatic approach to the expressive realization of harmony.