Maximal Dissonance: A Discursive Strategy in Ruth Crawfords Berlin Compositions

Mitch Ohriner M510 Women in MusicAxtell Final Paper April 24th, 2009

The music of Ruth Crawford has received a great deal of analytic attention in recent years. Of particular interest are several works composed during her year in Europe (1930-1931) on a Guggenheim fellowship.1 Crawfords productivity in that year is staggering. While abroad, she completes In Tall Grass from her Three Songs with texts by Carl Sandburg, all four Diaphonic Suites, the Chants for female chorus, the Piano Study in Mixed Accent, and, arguably her most well-known work, the String Quartet (1931). Within a year of returning, she begins an 18-year hiatus from composing modernist music. Almost without exception, the works of the Berlin year are the most widely regarded pieces in her oeuvre. Crawford herself was quite aware of her sudden prowess as a composer and wrote, in January 1931, I have never worked so steadily nor accomplished relatively so much as I have in these last months.2 Many of these pieces are foundations of the 20th century chamber repertoire and have attracted scholars because they present modes of construction common several decades later in a nascent and highly individualistic manner. To date, there have been two dominant methods of analysis of Crawfords music. Some analysts examine her music through the prism of Charles Seegers ideas of dissonant counterpoint, which receive their fullest explication in Tradition and

A word on names: in this paper I will refer to Ruth Crawford Seeger as Crawford. I do this because all of the music to be discussed was written before her marriage to Charles Seeger, and to prevent confusion, since he is also discussed at great length. 2 Ruth Crawford Seeger to Charles Seeger, 11 January 1931, personal collection of Mike Seeger, quoted in Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 141.
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Experiment in the New Music (hereafter TENM).3 Others deploy canonical post-tonal analytic tools, such as pitch class set analysis, transformations within the T/I group, and contour theory.4 In both cases there is a feint sense of opportunism: Crawfords music is being used in the service of an analytic method. There is surely a strong connection between Crawfords music and Seegers theory because of Crawfords close involvement (and perhaps authorship) of many aspects of TENM. But as Judith Tick establishes, many of the details of TENM are incomplete at the time of Crawfords most widely recognized compositions, and, furthermore, those pieces are composed when she is in Europe, at her apogee from Seeger. Seegers theory is certainly significant in the ways it prefigures later developments in 20th century music theory, like Schillingers System of Musical Composition and contemporary writings on contour.5 To prop up Seegers work, Crawfords music is taken as an early example of the viability of his theory. Opportunism also flavors many post-tonal analyses of Crawfords music. Ellie Hisama highlights the uncomfortable fit between this repertoire music and set theory.6 The success of set theory in the analysis of Schoenberg is inextricably linked to his aesthetic principles. If generating music from a kernel (or Grndgestalt) through developing variation is Schoenbergs compositional project, then highlighting similarities in pitch content between multiple instances of such a kernel is

The concepts of Dissonant Counterpoint can be found in many different stages in different writings. See Charles Seeger, Studies in Musicology II: 1929-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); idem., On Dissonant Counterpoint, Modern Music 7, no. 4 (1930), 25-36. For analyses of Crawfords music informed by Dissonant Counterpoint, see Taylor A. Greer, A Philosophy in Practice, in A Question of Balance: Charles Seegers Philosophy of Music (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998), 121-184; Judith Tick, Dissonant Counterpoint Revisited: The First Movement of Ruth Crawfords String Quartet (1931), in Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, and Carol Oja (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 405-22; David Nicholls, On Dissonant Counterpoint: The Development of a New Polyphony, Primarily by Charles Seeger, Carl Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford, in American Experimental Music, 1890-1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 89-133. 4 See Joseph N. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Juanity Karpf, Trichordal Transformation in Ruth Crawfords Diaphonic Suites, The Music Review 53:1 (1992), 32-46; 5 Ned Quist, Toward a Reconstruction of the Legacy of Joseph Schillinger, Notes 52, no. 2 (2002), 765-786; Straus, The Music of RCS, 21. 6 Ellie M. Hisama, The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawfords String Quartet, Third Movement, in Gendering Musical Modernism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12-34.
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particularly appropriate. But due to the influence of Dissonant Counterpoint, Crawfords music is predicated on almost the exact opposite project: the avoidance of structural repetition. The tension between examining a piece of music on its own terms and employing an established, and possibly enlightening method of analysis is irreducible. Even if we cannot escape from the influence of existing and well-known analytic methods, we can strive to elevate the status of the particular composition. One method for doing so is establish analyses grounded in biography and guided by social context. To the extent that gender and the social are intertwined such analysis can be considered feminist. While many analysts working in this vein explore the music of female composers, the process of working outward from social context does not limit the object of analysis to one gender.7 One of the central aspects of Crawfords identity in her year in Berlin is her outsider status. Indeed, as an ultramodernist female composer, she is an Other among Others. In her previous studies in America, first in Chicago and later in New York, she had continually struggled with selfdoubt. Yet in a series of letters addressed to Seeger in the fall of 1930, she demonstrates a wholly new confidence as a composer, what she calls a new sense of fearlessness.8 Lest she accused of lacking humility, she continued to make other self-effacing comments in her letters, but the banishment of her previous doubt is not in question. In the remainder of this paper, after giving a more complete account of Seegers theoretical ideas and Crawfords relation to them, Ill suggest a

Provided the term feminist is loosely constructed, feminist approaches to music analysis include Lori Burns, Analytic Methodologies for Rock Music: Harmonic and Voice-Leading Strategies in Tori Amoss Crucify, in Expression in Pop-Rock Music, ed. Walter Everett (New York: Garland, 2000), 213-46; Marion A. Guck, A Womans (Theoretical) Work, Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (1994), 28-43; and Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, On Rebecca Clarkes Sonata for Viola and Piano: Feminist Spaces and Metaphors of Reading, in Audible Traces: Gender, Identity and Music, ed. Elaine Barkin, Lydia Hamessley, and Benjamin Boretz (Zurich: Carciofoli Press, 1999), 71-114. KielianGilbert also shows how social context can impinge on the analysis of the same musical content in the works of different composers. Idem. Inventing a Melody with Harmony: Tonal Potential and Bachs Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, Journal of Music Theory 50, no. 1 (2006), 77-101. 8 Ruth Crawford Seeger to Charles Seeger, 11 November 1930, personal collection of Mike Seeger, quoted in Tick, RCS, 147.
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source for this confidence in her music. Namely, during the fall of 1930 Crawford not only internalized the principles of Dissonant Counterpoint, but she extended and possibly perfected them through the maximal distribution of musical features. Although Seegers treatise is lengthy, the crucial concepts of Dissonant Counterpoint can be quickly explained. In many respects, Seeger saw Dissonant Counterpoint as the inverse of traditional species counterpoint. Whereas in Fuxian species counterpoint consonance is the norm and dissonance is to be restricted to specific circumstances and handled with care, Seegers Dissonant Counterpoint treats dissonance as stable and consonance as volatile and in need of resolution. In Dissonant Counterpoint, multiple voices can be satisfactorily combined provided that they are maximally dissimilar, diaphonic (sounding apart) rather than symphonic (sounding together).9 Seeger terms a texture of multiple diaphonic voices heterophony, in contrast to polyphony.10 This new ideal of heterophony has a number of practical implications. At least five novel pitch classes should separate two members of the same pitch class. One should avoid repeating the same interval between the voices more than twice, and consonances should resolve by leap.11 Later, in the more thorough TENM, Seeger describes the need for melodies to be dissonated in order to systematically avoid tonal implications. This means that consonant melodic intervals will be followed by dissonant ones and that implied triads will be quickly undermined by moving to proximal semitones. The heterophonic ideal arose from Seegers general dissatisfaction with European modernism. He saw unacceptable remnants of tonality in Schoenbergs twelve-tone method.

Seeger,On Dissonant Counterpoint, 28. Mark D. Nelson, In Pursuit of Charles Seeger's Heterophonic Ideal: Three Palindromic Works by Ruth Crawford, The Musical Quarterly 72, no. 4 (1986), 459. 11 Seeger, On Dissonant Counterpoint, 30.
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Permutations of the row may have prevented a tonal center from being established for long durations, but the continued presence of consonant intervals still allows for temporary allusions to tonality. Thus, Dissonant Counterpoint differs from Schoenbergian atonality in several respects. As permutations of a row are chained together, there is no guarantee that pitch classes will be separated by any number of intervening pitches.12 And, as Berg amply demonstrates with his Violin Concerto, tonal allusions can be built explicitly into the very fabric of a twelve-tone piece.13 Ruth Crawford not only endorsed the aesthetic positions behind dissonant counterpoint, but was instrumental in formulating its details. She initially served as Seegers secretary in the preparation of a TENM during the spring and summer of 1930, but both acknowledge that her role transitioned from a typist to an editor to that of a collaborator with an equal stake in the outcome.14 Seeger eventually offered to make her a coauthor, but she flatly refused him, saying: In a tangible senseit is our book, our child. And I am unhumilitious enough to say that I know I helpedBut, nevertheless, you are the writer of our book.15 Crawford also shared Seegers estimation of contemporary European modernism, and during her stay in Berlin she negatively evaluated virtually all of its practitioners. Schoenbergs music

Indeed, serial composers often choose row forms to achieve exactly the opposite effect. In the second movement of Weberns Variations for Piano, Op. 27, row forms are selected such that they replicate the pitch A4 in some ordinal position. This resultant frequent repetition of A4 would strike Seeger as consonance reminiscent of tonality, despite the serial processes at work. David Lewin has explored the resulting network of relationships among pitch classes in the movement in his Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (Second Edition) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 182. 13 David Headlam The Music of Alban Berg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 366 ff. 14 Tick, RCS, 131. 15 Ruth Crawford Seeger to Charles Seeger, 21 September 1930, personal collection of Mike Seeger, quoted in Tick, RCS, 132. One can interpret her reticence towards coauthorship as an example of the anxiety of authorship, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubers more forceful variant of Harold Blooms anxiety of influence. See Gilbert and Guber, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979) and Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). Whereas a male creator must struggle to find an individual voice within the pantheon of successful predecessors, a female creator must first struggle to assert her right to having a voice at all. Marcia Citron traces the anxiety of authorship through many female composers including Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. See her Gender and the Musical Canon (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 54-70. In Citrons formulation, the anxiety of authorship is most pronounced when female composers operate in the public sphere. This also rings true for Crawford, who experience immense difficulties in fulfilling an orchestral commission while in Berlin. See Tick, RCS 134.
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was comprised of a long succession of small motives that left her longing for a line, for even a weak piece of string to lead me out of the mass of rootless treeless leaves.16 The most prominent collection of avant-garde German composers of the Weimar period, the Novembergruppe, which at times included Kurt Weil, Stephan Wolpe, and George Antheil, was described as being so dependent on the classical tradition as to be devoid of content.17 But the most pointed rejection was directed towards neoclassicists like Darius Milhaud as such sickening sweet inanity.18 Crawford and Seeger also shared an ideological commitment to dissonance as an organizing force in music. Indeed, Crawfords devotion to dissonance during her stay in Europe at times takes the tone of a social struggle. Modernism was rapidly losing cultural cache in Germany as the National Socialists consolidated power and oversaw a sweeping rightward swing in cultural politics. Her frequently expressed anxieties over the future of musical modernism necessitated constant reassurances from Charles. The following correspondence is typical: As to the future of dissonant writingdont be downhearted! Of course we have shot far beyond the level to which things will settle by 1950. But the further beyond we go, the higher that level will beso cheer up!19 Given their shared commitments, personal closeness, and intensive collaboration on TENM, it is tempting to view Crawfords music as the embodiment of Dissonant Counterpoint. Unlike other composer/theorists of the early twentieth century, Seeger himself leaves no music to compare to his theory. And, indeed, Crawfords music does match many of the strictures established by Seeger. However, hearing Crawford through Seeger greatly misconstrues the nature of the influence the latter had on the former.

Tick, RCS, 148. Ibid, 143. 18 Ibid, 149. 19 Charles Seeger to Ruth Crawford Seeger, 2 February 1931, personal collection of Mike Seeger, quoted in Tick, RCS, 150.
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While TENM elaborates many of the aesthetic values of Seeger and Crawfords brand of modernism, Crawford could no more turn to TENM as a composition manual than Mozart could turn to Gradus ad Parnassum for artistic production. In the realm of what modern music can be, Seegers strictures eliminate only the slightest segment of possibilities. While she may have been ebullient in citing Seegers influence and support for her composing, it cannot be forgotten that Crawford wrote many of her most noted composition separated from Seeger by 1500 miles while carrying on a correspondence the time intervals of which are measured not in moments but in weeks. Throughout her year in Berlin, she wrote pieces against the advice of Seeger and with no performance opportunity in the offing. As Tick writes, despite her claims and protestations about how much she needed Charlie, she wrote her best work without him, in a genre that he said was not right for her at the time.20 Crawfords music can be viewed as exemplary Dissonant Counterpoint, but such an observation is tantamount to observing that Mozarts music is devoid of parallel fifths. In many respects, Crawfords treatment of pitch content is far more severe than Seegers prescriptions. For example, consider the concept of melodic dissonation in the Piano Study in Mixed Accents (PSMA).21 This piece, a palindromic barrage of 16th notes irregularly grouped by accents, is an ideal laboratory for dissonant melodies since it lacks another diaphonic voice. In a whole host of parameters, PSMA not only conforms to the precepts of Dissonant Counterpoint, but exemplifies them through the establishment of maximal variety of musical features. For a melody to be sufficiently dissonated, there must be five pitches intervening between repeated pitch classes, but what would a maximally dissonant melody look like? For starters, the average distance between repetitions of pitch classes (a value Ill call pcrep) would be largenearly 12.

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Tick, RCS, 156. Ruth Crawford, Piano Study in Mixed Accents (Bryn Mawr, PA: Theodore Presser, 1984).

In PSMA, pcrep is indeed 11.81. 22 But an even distribution of pitch classes means more than simply a large average interval between pitch class recursion: it also means maximal variety of pcrep values and an even distribution of those values throughout the piece. The variety of pcrep is analogous to how often the plot of pcrep changes direction. Such a plot can be seen in Figure 1, and it changes direction after 67% of its points. To determine that the values of pcrep are evenly distributed, a moving average of the plot should not present any noticeable shape. This is confirmed in Figure 2.23 The distribution of the twelve pitch classes is thus very even, and hence highly dissonant. But avoiding motivic repetition is another aspect of dissonant melody, even if Seeger did not address this explicitly. If, for instance, C always follows Eb, an attentive listener may hear C as a tonal center regardless of how many other pitches intervened. Say we examine every instance of the pitch class C and look at which pitch class follows it. We could then make a matrix of the same observation for the other pitch classes. This is called a transitional probability matrix, and it is highly useful in machine learning tasks.24 In a maximally dissonant melody, the likelihood of any pitch class following C should be roughly the same, that is to say 1/12.25 The plot of the transitional probability matrix (Figure 3) shows that motivic content is widely distributed, with 0 or 1 instances of any dyad being the most common. Some dyads are considerably more common, including a

Cynthia Pace has also measured aggregate completion in the PSMA. One should keep in mind that a high value of pcrep in a piece does not directly comment on how dissonant it is. As a thought experiment, imagine a piece that strictly employed a diatonic collection, perhaps akin to Arvo Prts Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. Further, the first and last notes of the piece are some non-diatonic pitch. Such a piece may have a very large pcrep, but would still be predominantly consonant. Cynthia Pace, Accent on form-against-form: Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents, Theory and Practice 20 (1995), 125-147. 23 Figure 2 plots pc as points. The line represents a moving average of 7 values. Many of the spikes can be attributed rep to isolated, particularly high pcrep values. 24 Say we wished to automatically generate a string of pitches for the piano that sounded a lot like the PSMA, but wasnt an exact copy. We could create a transitional probability matrix and then use is to create the piece. From the pitch C, we would weight all the other pitch classes based on their probability of following C, roll an appropriately weighted 12 sided die (or, more likely, use a computer), and move to the pitch that came up. This method of generation is called a Markov chain. 25 Perhaps we ought to constrict the likelihood of C following C to zero, and hence the optimal mean probability is 1/11.
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couple that occur 7 times (a histogram of the transition probability matrix can be seen in Figure 4). Still, one should expect some dyads to be more common in a random string of dyads. In 10,000 random strings of 231 pitch classes, a dyad was repeated at least 7 times in about a quarter of instances. Thus the presence of seven repetitions of a dyad should not be taken to mean there is conscious motivic treatment of that dyad. Another aspect of dissonating a melody is to avoid allusions to consonant triads. Figure 5 shows the prevalence of the 12 trichords.26 Pitch class set 3-12 (084), the augmented triad, is not represented at all. Major and minor triads (pcset (037), Forte 3-11) are present in the PSMA; there are 18 of them out of 240 total trichords, or 7.5%.27 A more revealing observation is that when Crawford uses the intervals that could outline a triad, ic 3, 4, or 5, she rarely completes the triad.28 In a variety of measurements of pitch content, Crawfords Piano Study in Mixed Accents features maximally even distribution. It does not merely follow the rules of Dissonant Counterpoint, but rather takes those principles to their logical extremes in a manner Charles Seeger did not envision in TENM. Another aspect of Dissonant Counterpoint that Crawford emphasizes is the elimination of meter. The same techniques that elucidate maximal distribution of pitch can be used to examine rhythm. The groups determined by the placement of accents vary in the piece from two to seven sixteenth notes. Figure 6 gives a bar plot of the prevalence of group lengths, and Figure 7 provides a transitional probability matrix similar to Figure 3. Immediately noticeable is the prominence of groups 5 sixteenths in length. As the matrix shows, it is also quite common for five
One of the richer ironies of plot is that two of the three most prevalent trichords, pcs 3-4 (014) and 3-6 (016) are those most closely identified with Schoenberg and his disciples. 27 Of course, is this still quite low: in a piece like Bachs C-Major Prelude, the prevalence of pcs 3-11 would be much higher. 28 (037) only accounts for 13% of trichords with an (03) subset, 17% of those with an (04) subset, and 19% of those with an (05) subset.
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note groups to follow other five-note groups. In 10,000 simulations of 53 random groups from 2-7 members, in only 83 cases was any cardinality as common as 5 is in PSMA. Yet in an equal number of simulations, a rhythmic dyad was found as commonly as the 5-5 pair in PSMA 269 times. One way of conceiving of this discrepancy is that Crawford uses the 5-note grouping far more frequently than would be expected if group lengths were determined through a random process, yet she is more effective in preventing the metricization of the 5-note groups by limiting their repetition. That is to say, if any cardinality of group length occurred as often as 5 does is PSMA, it would be more metricized than 5 is in Crawfords piece. Changing group lengths consistently is not enough to prevent the establish of meter. Alternating between groups of 4 and 2 prevents the repetition of group lengths, but it is highly metrical. Is some meter likely to be established through a combination of multiple groups? We can get at this question by asking a related one: if we assume some arbitrary meter to continue throughout the piece, are accents more likely to fall on a certain beat within that meter? Begin with a series of integers that represent the accents of the piece. Rather than think of group lengths (i.e. 6+5+5+5+3), think of the numerical integration of that series (i.e. 6, 11, 16, 21, 24). Then take that series modulus all the reasonable cardinalities, such as 5-11.29 If the long-range establishment of meter is to be avoided, this modulated series should be evenly distributed across all beat classes. Here again the propensity of 5 is evident, and if we begin counting with the second group we will be rewarded by hearing 34% of the groups as being on the downbeat. Still, the ability to track meter in that fashion in a piece played at such a quick tempo is remote. The preceding statistical studies reveal that in the case of PSMA, Crawford succeeds in crafting a string of pitches that maximally distributes musical features (like aggregate completion,

For example, [6,11,16,21,24]mod 5= [1,1,1,1,4]. Its unlikely people can interpret meters of cardinalities higher than 11 as non-compound. Justin London, Hearing in Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 103.
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dyads, and triads). Analogously, PSMA can be viewed as a maximally dissonant melody. The analyses presented do not reveal the piece to be exemplary of Seegers theories, but rather they seek to uncover the compositional principles of Crawford at a moment when she was both removed from Seegers orbit and professing the highest confidence in her art. The move towards identifying the ways in which Crawfords music is not prefigured by Seegers theories is instigated by aspects of her lived experience at the time of their composition. Thus, I believe they represent an honest attempt at socially informed analysis. It is not my contention that other analyses are in any way less valid: studies that affirm existing analytic methodologies play an invaluable role in the development of musical scholarship. But examining a work through the lens of the author, whatever his or her gender, is a different kind of project, one that, thankfully, continues to gain prominence in the field.

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Works Cited: Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Burns, Lori. Analytic Methodologies for Rock Music: Harmonic and Voice-Leading Strategies in Tori Amoss Crucify, in Expression in Pop-Rock Music, ed. Walter Everett, 213-246. New York: Garland, 2000. Citron, Marcia. Gender and the Musical Canon. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Crawford, Ruth. Piano Study in Mixed Accents. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Theodore Presser, 1984. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gilbert. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Greer, Taylor A. A Philosophy in Practice: Compositional Theory. Chap. 6 in A Question of Balance: Charles Seegers Philosophy of Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Guck, Marion A. A Womans (Theoretical) Work. Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (1994): 28-43. Headlam, David. The Music of Alban Berg. New York: Yale University Press, 1996. Hisama, Ellie M. The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawfords String Quartet, Third Movement. Chap. 2 in Gendering Musical Modernism, 12-34. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Karpf, Juanita. Trichordal Transformation in Ruth Crawfords Diaphonic Suites. The Music Review 53, no. 1 (1992): 32-46. Lewin, David. Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. London, Justin. Hearing in Time. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Nelson, Mark D. In Pursuit of Charles Seeger's Heterophonic Ideal: Three Palindromic Works by Ruth Crawford. The Musical Quarterly 72, no. 4 (1986): 458-475. Nicholls, David.On Dissonant Counterpoint: The Development of a New Polyphony, Primarily by Charles Seeger, Carl Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford. Chap. 3 in American Experimental Music, 1890-1940. London: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pace, Cynthia. Accent on form-against-form: Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents. Theory and Practice 20 (1995): 125-147. Quist, Ned. Toward a Reconstruction of the Legacy of Joseph Schillinger. Notes 52, no. 2 (2002): 765-786. Straus, Joseph N. The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Tick, Judith. Dissonant Counterpoint Revisited: The First Movement of Ruth Crawfords String Quartet (1931), in Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, and Carol Oja, 405-22. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. Kielian-Gilbert, Marianne. Inventing a Melody with Harmony: Tonal Potential and Bachs Das alte Jahr vergangen ist. Journal of Music Theory 50, no. 1 (2006): 77-101. . On Rebecca Clarkes Sonata for Viola and Piano: Feminist Spaces and Metaphors of Reading, in Audible Traces: Gender, Identity and Music, ed. Elaine Barkin, Lydia Hamessley, and Benjamin Boretz, 71-114. Zurich: Carciofoli Press, 1999.

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Figure 1: Interval of repetition of pitch class in Ruth Crawfords Piano Study in Mixed Accents (first half).
Duration (in 16ths) between instances of the same pc
30 0 5 10 15 20 25

50

100

150

200

250

index of sixteenths

Figure 2: Interval between repetition of pitch class (gray dots), with moving average (black line). Window size=7.
30 0 5 10 15 20 25

50

100

150

200

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number of dyads occuring that often

3 3 3 1 0 4 0 0 1 2 2 0
0

1 1 2 2 1 1 1 6 2 3 0 3

0 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 0 0 5 2
2

1 0 1 1 3 1 5 1 0 3 3 0

1 1 2 3 0 3 2 0 4 2 4 1
4

4 2 2 0 0 0 0 6 1 3 1 3

1 0 3 1 4 0 4 1 3 1 2 2
6

1 2 1 1 0 7 1 2 1 1 1 0

3 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 3
8

1 7 0 1 1 2 2 1 3 0 1 2

4 0 2 1 3 0 1 0 3 2 1 2
10

0 1 2 3 1 1 4 3 0 1 3 1

10

first pitch class

10

20

30

40

Figure 4: Transitional probability matrix Figure 5: Histogram of transitional probability matrix. of pitch class sets. Number in matrix represents the index of times the two pitches are paired.
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number of times dyad occurs

second pitch class

Figure 6: Histogram of rhythmic cardinalities. Figure 7: Transitional probability matrix of rhythmic cardinalities.
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1
Cardinality of first group Index of cardinality
15

5 2 4 2 1 1 5 1 1 1

4 8 7 1 2 3 2 1

10

Cardinality of rhythmic group

0 0

Cardinality of second group

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