Comparing Notes by Adam Ockelford

Author:Adam Ockelford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 72 The simple structure comprising four zygonic relationships that underlies the opening motif of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

Beyond this, groups of musical events that are proximate in time and similar in sound can cohere in the mind to form motifs: a second structural level that has a linguistic parallel in two- and three-word combinations that constitute short, more or less self-contained phrases. Third, there are frameworks, imaginary matrices of pitch and time, whose elements have different perceived probabilities of occurrence according to a listener’s previous exposure to pieces in a particular style or genre. These are in some ways equivalent to the generative grammars that enable us to form new and potentially complex (though immediately comprehensible) utterances using words. These three structural levels are hierarchical in the sense that ‘higher’ (more advanced) levels necessarily build on ‘lower’ (more elementary) ones.

To hear the three structural levels in action, let us turn once more to the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. To the ear that makes sense of bars 1 and 2, we can surmise that imitative relationships must be constructed in the mind between the repeated pitches and IOIs (inter-onset intervals) that are heard to form the ‘fate knocking on the door’ motif (see Figure 72).

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