Yale University Department of Music

Review
Author(s): Richmond Browne
Review by: Richmond Browne
Source: Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 390-415
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Yale University Department of Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/843643
Accessed: 01-05-2015 22:08 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Duke University Press and Yale University Department of Music are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Journal of Music Theory.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
390

BOOK

REVIEWS

THE STRUCTURE OF ATONAL MUSIC

by Allen Forte
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1973.
ix, 224p.

REVIEWER
Richmond Browne

To be the inventor of the code language used by your peers to

talk about a set of phenomena that interests them is no mean
feat. From Hauer and Schoenberg, through Babbitt, Hanson,
Martino, Lewin, and many others, a model of the constructs
possible within the single constraint of a twelve-tone equal-
tempered pitch world has been evolving. With the present
volume, Professor Forte presents a presumably definitive ver-
sion of his model, the concepts and terminology of which seem
likely to become a kind of standard lexicon-for a while, at
least. If that is even partly true, then the book deserves care-
ful attention. This review will attempt only a portion of that
critical task. Briefly, I will take the tack that there are no
mathematical errors in the book (though there may be); that
there are no errors of simple musical identification and trans-
lation into Forte's terms (though there may be); and that his
observations of musical structure are unexceptionable (though

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 391

often admirable and valuable, they are not, I think, beyond

discussion---and the relation between the criteria used to de-
cide that a certain thing is "atonal" or "a compositional group"
and the description of such things in terms of pitch class is
the single most problematic facet of the book). Leaving those
three areas still in need of criticism (there will be several
other reviews of this book in PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC
alone), I will discuss two others: the conceptional assumptions
which precede the book, and the strategic and communicative
problems resident in its style.

Allen Forte's long list of contributions to theoretical method

prepares the reader only in some measure for this well made,
dense, difficult, frustrating, and fascinating book. In order
to document that range of theoretical work and provide a back-
drop for consideration of the present volume, I append an in-
formal list of his publications and begin with a summary of
them. (See my Appendix I for all references to writings by
Forte. )

Three major concerns mark the author's teaching and writing

career thus far: Schenkerian tonal theory, computer processes,
and atonal music. In all three, he has made his distinguished
efforts public, and it is always a pleasure to be confronted with
another Forte statement. We would be enriched by such state-
ments in areas where his expertise has thus far been confined to
the classroom, e.g., his command of the history of eighteenth and
nineteenth century tonal theory. It would be remiss, also, not
to mention the important role he has played in national efforts
to reform educational practice in music education, particularly
his early and signal contribution to that extraordinary boon
and boondoggle, the Contemporary Music Project.

Forte' s attention to the theory of tonal music and the explication

of Schenkerian ideas has been of great help to theorists seeking
pedagogical insight and order. The best example of the several
useful productions by Forte-trained scholars is David Beach's
"A Schenker Bibliography" (1968).'1 Forte's own TONAL
HARMONY IN CONCEPT AND PRACTICE (1962), while not as
overtly Schenkerian as I, for one, would wish, is still the best
book of its kind, richly deserving of its re-issuance in an en-
larged second edition this year.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
392

A second direction of Forte's work has been to employ the com-

puter as an aid to analysis (it is an aid which subtly molds the
user) through projects as diverse as score-reading programs,
analytic tasks, and even a witty SNOBOL3 PRIMER (1967).
Again, the work of a student may be cited. In that excellent
article "Intervallic Relations in Atonal Music" by Richard
Teitelbaum '2, the first to employ Forte's set-complex algo-
rithms as pre-analytic strategy, I think it is not excessively
imaginative to see a feedback relation between the end and the
means, the theory and the method. The great reduction of mu-
sical data achieved by invoking pitch-class set-complex gram-
mar seems to some extent conditioned by the computer's re-
quirement for totally unambiguous rules and precisely coded
data.

The third principal concern of the author, dating to his CON-

TEMPORARY TONE-STRUCTURES (1955) and THE COMPOSI-
TIONAL MATRIX (1961), is the music (perhaps generally dis-
cussed in more loving detail than it is performed) known as
"atonal". I will not attempt a definition of that term here, but
must note that, despite its title, the present volume offers
little more than an ostensive definition: atonal music is pre-
sumably that music discussed in the book. Or perhaps it is the
non-serial and non-paratonal music of the composers listed in
the terribly brief Preface: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, and
Stravinsky-and Scriabin, Ives, Ruggles, Busoni, and Szyman-
owski. The Big Four account for all but 36 of the 432 set cita-
tions indexed in the musical examples; Scriabin (with 26), Ives
(7), and Ruggles, Busoni, and Bartok (1 each) are also cited.
"Any composition that exhibits the structural characteristics
that are discussed, and that exhibits them throughout, may be
regarded as atonal" (from the Preface). "The repertory of
atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in
novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar
pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments" (page 1).

The invoking of the context of Forte's work is not gratuitous;

it is intended to help this review overcome the terseness with
which he states his most general premises. I will attempt to
relate items from that context to the assumptions which, I
think, govern the book. And, in any case, should it appear
that the body of this review displays (beyondproblems stemming
from the reviewer's competence or lack thereof) any doubt
about various concepts or presentations under consideration, I
hope to have established by such invocation my respect for the
author and his accomplishments.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 393

But I do find some things problematic in THE STRUCTURE

OF ATONAL MUSIC. I have taught the elements of Forte's
set-complex theory to most of my classes, freshman through
graduate, for about eight years, finding it extremely helpful
as a complete, organic, neutral, but of course essentially
propaedeutic device. The assertions I may have uttered, how-
ever, about the extent to which a set-complex "fact" may or
may not be a useful model of a musical-behavioral "fact" have
always been my own. I have found the device most helpful,
by the way, in discussing the many intricate judgments which
coalesce in the giant gestalt called tonality-a theme which
can receive only limited treatment in this article. In the be-
lief that my problems with such assertions, as inherent in the
theory or as made manifest in this book, may form a sub- or
super-set with those of other readers, I will proceed.

In his "A Theory of Set-Complexes for Music" (1964), Forte

set forth the basic notions of pitch class, interval class, and
pc/ic / set and set-complex, leading to a discussion of unordered
pitch-set inclusion relations. Except for a brief examination
of Webern, Op. 5/4, that article modestly set out only to dis-
cover "limiting factors"-not analytical statements based upon
a theory of musical syntax, but merely some statements de-
scribing the set-complexes derived from the inclusion relation.
"No initial assertion is made that it [the inclusion relation] is
the only or even the most important restraint [upon the syn-
tactical structure of a given piece] but merely that, given two
sets, one can immediately say whether they are in the defined
relation" (1964, p. 138). Whether Forte believed in 1964 that
the statable relations between pc/ic sets were musically sig-
nificant or not, the present volume clearly asserts that they are,
in fact, "The Structure" of at least atonal music. The word
"immediately" applies only to computers; running even the set
identification algorithms with a pencil, let alone an ear, is not
an immediate process even with experience, and it is slowed by
certain unhelpful practices (to be discussed later)which, inter-
e stingly, have been regretted but not improved upon in the book.

The disclaimer that finding pitch classes, or interval classes,

or sets of them is not an assertion about music need not
be accepted. "A theory ultimately represents a decision to
regard objects from a particular point of view" (Clifton,
1969). '3 And vice versa. A decision to regard pitches as
members of pitch classes represents a theory-namely, that

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
394

(at least some) musical behavior must be based upon octave

equival~ence. Pitch class stems from two sources: (1) the
powerful presence of syntactical usages involving octaves in
tonality (not to be confused with a common, seldom recog-
nized as "natural law", assertion that octave equivalence is
a reflex, an automatic behavior), and (2) the Schoenbergian
notion of ordering sets of pitches without initial compositional
regard for register, in order to create a maximally intra-
piece, only intra-contextually referential, environment for the
events in each piece. In both of these cases, an assumption
prevails: that "octave equivalence" is a special and uniquely
powerful kind of behavioral possibility. It is; but I will argue
later on that it is not as important in the full scheme of rela-
tional field construction as either tradition has it. The Babbitt
term "pitch class" is not a neutral term. It argues that pitches
in octave relation bear some significant kind of musical rela-
tion to each other, to a degree which has special rank among
other possible ways in which pitches (not to mention sounds)
might be seen to be related or equivalent. In simple tests
this seems undeniable, but when the premise is carried to the
present point of treating unordered sets in complexes of rather
vast scope, perhaps it is appropriate to ask that the model be
examined for behavioral relevance. There are ways to do that,
but they all begin with the oldest method: self-observation.
Are you really doing what you say is happening?

The plan of THE STRUCTURE OF ATONAL MUSIC provides

two sections. In the first, Forte retraces his 1964 article,
re-writing and extending definitions and now applying them as
a theory of structure to musical examples. This sectionwill
be, for most readers, the most valuable. The author has
clearly expended a great deal of effort to make the exposition
of his basic concepts understandable to a reader who is willing
to work. But the expository style, which resembles that of a
text in mathematics, not in content but in terseness, asks you
to keep a close watch; once a concept has been defined, one is
"exhorted" to remember that it will simply be used. In the
mounting flow of hierarchies, expressed deliberately in quasi-
mathematical terms in order to avoid mis-connotation, named
with a fairly bewildering variety of opaque codes, it is tough
going most of the time. The anticlimax attendant upon finding
out that one is going to have to remember, among other things,
to call "common tones" (pitch classes contained in each of two

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 395

transformations of a set) "invariants", and the existence of

same an "Rp" property is not singular.

The second section presumes that the reader has command of

the first, and offers some very cogent and penetrating analysis
of excerpts rather more lengthy than those usually found in
close analytic work. The masterful and even beautiful nota-
tional reductions of the music featured in this section are of
particular value as examples of the art of showing musical
structure by graphic means.

The setting forth of the most basic assumption of all: the

positing of pc, ic, and pc/ic set--the positing, not the defining
---is over very soon. As stated above, this review will re-
verse the book's proportions by dealing at some length with its
pre -conditional assumptions about musical equivalence and then
starting, but perhaps not finishing, a tour of some aspects of
its language, closing with a consideration of the claims of the
Preface and the title. I freely concede that this may constitute
a kind of injustice to Mr. Forte and to readers of this article,
and that my own inabilities may make difficulties appear where
others would find none. The book is impressive in the amount
and quality of its argument, clearly important to every serious
student of analytic procedure, and richly deserving of many
different kinds of critical treatment. Nevertheless, I will limit
myself to two aspects which, from my own use of the book and
its parent article in analysis and pedagogy, seem less than
fully successful: (1) the overgeneralizing of musical data (a
problem inherent in the excessive reliance upon the notion of
pitch class as the primary kind of musical equivalence), and (2)
the difficulty of disentangling statements about musical equiva-
lence from the thicket of mathematical terminology and private
alphanumeric code s.

The word "The" in the title of the present volume is ambitious.

The "Structure" examined in the book is the pitch and interval
patterning obtained from the music for the most part by rather
traditional resort to the other familiar parametrical proximi-
ties. These pitch and interval patterns are then immediately
taken to be members of a global domain called a pitch class/
interval class set complex..

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
39b

The core assertion of the term pitch class is that a pitch is

what it is, no matter where it occurs registrally, ordinally,
or in presentation. The necessary corollary is that an interval
is "equivalent" to its interval class brothers, no matter how
presented. And ultimately the necessary corollary is that a
presented group of sounds is somehow "equivalent" to all..
all. . . other groups which can be shown to contain not just the
pitches, not just the intervals, but even the register-free pitch
classes, or the classes of intervals potentially available among
some similar group of register-free pitches. Thus, by exten-
sion, this group would be "equivalent" to all other sets of pitch
classes which include pitch classes able to assume (among
other roles) the set-member roles played in the pitch class
set of the presented phenomenon (i.e., pitch classes having
intervallic contexts transpositionally or inversionally derived
from those in the presented group). And finally, this group
would be "equivalent" to those portions of other sets which,
under definition, "include" the essential characteristics of the
presented set (its pc or ic content, weakly; its pc and ic ar-
rangement, more significantly) or are "included" in it. All of
these "equivalent" groups comprise a set-complex. Forte has
followed the implication of pitch class to the bitter end. I just
find it very hard to believe that set-complex meaning for the
word "equivalent" (or other such words from the text as "pre-
sent in", "represented", "found", "imbricated", "occurring")
exhausts, or even gets to the best senses of, the notion of
phenomenological surrogate. The sense of surrogateness can
be produced by a large number of other strategies: I will call
them positional, figurational, compositional, gestalt, or pre-
sentational, and probably other things, during this essay. My
point is that I don't think that pitch class (octave) equivalence
holds primacy of place among the ways we do (let alone must)
recognize relatedness among pitches and pitch structures.
Octave equivalence is, rather, one of a number of perceivable
entities which, when made available by the more immediate
gestalts, can become objects of attention. My corollary, ob-
viously, is that I find other strategies both more immediate
and more explanatory than the sense of pitches being members
of classes, intervals being members of classes, and both being
members of unordered sets of such ephemeral qualia.

The assignment of a pitch to a pitch class says, behaviorally,

that the basis upon which a listener will (should) relate that
pitch to some other pitch is better explained by invoking its
membership in some pc set than by other means. But music
is made of real pitches, sounds committed to a registral
place. It is made of real intervals and real configurations
'-4

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 397

of intervals specifically for the piece contextually and phenom-

enally there. All other things, however conceivable as en-
vironments, are provided by the listener. Even if we accept
a current position from linguistics-that a sentence (piece)
does not "contain" its content, but only provides a way for the
listener to make up a content-structure out of his own experi-
ence-we must still examine the kinds of strategy employed
by the listener (ourselves) in that process, even though we
no longer assert that the sentence (piece) "contains" those
strategies.

The notion of musical equivalence, therefore, involves (for

me) assertions the opposite of which would be counter-intui-
tive:

(1) Musical behavior is essentially a gestalt (holistic)

process of observing sameness and difference among
the most easily discriminated qualia being presented.
The "units" of music are thus probably configurations
more complex than simple pitches.

(2) What is presented is the sounds during aural attention

(or a silent imagining of such attention). No state-
ment made on the basis of a presumed relation seen
in a score or proffered by the composer or any other
analyst matters to you unless you can believe that the
presumed relation can be heard (it may take work to
learn how) and heard for the reason advanced by the
analyst.

(3) One cannot attend to every sound and relation calcul-

able in a presentation. Thus, although it is certainly
valuable for Forte to have provided us with a stated
relation linking any event to large numbers of possible
events, it remains unlikely that anyone can actually
discriminate between the various relatively large com-
plexes which differ so little from one another. Most
of what follows should be read as being relatively less
doubtful when the set or event is relatively small. I
am aware that I attend to only a fraction of that which
is presented in the music, partly for reasons I bring
to the process, but mostly for reasons I can't control
. . .therefore I observe what it is I am doing, not
what I say I am doing.

(4) Among the multifarious reasons I seem to find for the

phenomenon of relating one event to another, pitch

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
398
equivalence (the acceptance of a pitch as "that thing
again") seems intuitively strong if the register is the
same as that of a previous occurrence, and weaker as
registral distance increases. I recognize that, in
tonality, that dispersion is often partly overcome, but
I remember that it always affects me. Therefore there
must be, in tonality, something which reinforces my
generally weak sense of octave "equivalence" and
makes me think that octave-related pitches really are
"equivale nt".

Tonality has several strategies for bringing to octave-related

pitches other, even stronger, kinds of equivalence. The use
of similar context, the same configurational and intervallic
designs to designate various members of a family of octave-
related pitches as holding a status called, say, "tonic" is one
such strategy. Pitches not octave-related can thus also be
made "role equivalent" (the term is William Benjamin's) and
often are. The octave-related pitches may well be, probably
are, the most easily brought into clear focus this way; that is
not the same thing as saying that the octave relation "creates"
the equivalence. Tonality also employs much balder designs
to bring the octave to our attention: redundant use of octave
doubling, direct octave leaps, group transpositions at the oc-
tave, all usually without changing any other roles imputed to
octave-related pitches in question, etc. The same resem-
blances of configuration can also produce (and hierarchically
differentiate) kinds of equivalence among pitches bearing other
intervallic relations. *5 I am saying that the gestalt resem-
blances are extra-tonal--above tonality or any other pitch sys-
tem. They are the many kinds of equivalence more immediate
and essential than music itself, treating pitch as a kind of sound
event, and sound as a kind of event. It is strange, indeed,
that atonal music (and, more urgently, serial music)has, in
at least some of its manifestations and most of its apologia,
seemed to argue so strongly that octave equivalence must
somehow be the real basis for the structuring of presented
events when the same music and apologia have sanctioned, even
required, the absence of presented octaves, which one might
think essential as a contextual guide to the argued basic premise
of the system.

So I conclude (tentatively) that though pitched sounds be the

stuff of our music, and octaves a special slice of pitches, pitch
class is too broad. Octave equivalence, though undeniably easy
to make manifest in certain configurations, is the thing being
brought forward, not the principal mental process by which we

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 399

relate tones. It is not a natural law, not an inescapable or

automatic behavior; it is not the most immediate, undeniable,
or undisguisable aspect of event relation.

I ignore the defense (not offered by Forte, of course) of octave

equivalence on "natural law of acoustics" grounds. It could
only remind us that it was not so long ago that the major sec-
onds in a diatonic scale were solemnly explained as being there
because of (even tuned according to) the supposed continual in-
fluence of 9/8 or 10/9 ratios between the upper partials of
"pure" natural sound which, not so long ago, seemed to sur-
round us.

Pitch class is only a defined relation. Pitch class analyses of

compositions are only models of musical behavior. `6 At the
behavioral level the question is, is pitch class activity ob-
servable (in the sense that tests run on the basis of change in
pitches within a class would produce significant discrimination
of change)? At the analytic level the question is, is it neces-
sary (in the sense that analytic statements made on other bases
are incomplete without this "deeper" generalization)?

About half the time I conclude (upon examing a Forte musical

example) that I do see (hear, not just see in the example) mu-
sical equivalence of some sort across at least some aspects of
the presented events. The trouble is that most of the time the
coherence I detect is quite explainable without resorting to the
concept of pitch class; it is attributable to things like the re-
currence of pitches at registral data, or to the shifting of
whole configurations without much distortion of other parame-
ters. Most of these cases I would probably call, in some sense,
"tonal". I am particularly reluctant to invoke registerless and
orderless sets to explain events which occur only in specific
registers and orders. The whole idea of a pc/ic set is that all
the events which can be made from a set, or a set complex,
are somehow associable; that is arguable enough without pre-
senting examples which do not begin to exhaust the variants of
the set.

The presenting of unordered sets as the matrix argues that when

one confronts an event (part of a set) one somehow "knows" (a)
that it is a part of set x, and (b) which part it is. That bothers
me. In tonality, with its peculiarly designed and carefully

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
400

preserved patterns, it is quite true that a listener ought to

have exactly that sense of identification of position from partial
data most of the time. The essence of tonality is the inference
of unstated events. No analytic assertion of set membership
can make that psychological action be there if it is not there.
I doubt that it is there for just any, every set.

If certain pc/ic sets occur with reasonable frequency in some

piece, but only with certain specific configurations, then it is
reasonable to think that the full, abstract, "basic" content of
the entire set and its complex is not the ideogram and need not
be invoked, that the specific configurations have the values
which differentiate their various functions in the process of
recognizing coherence. At any rate, in these cases I am very
seldom led to try, or indeed feel any need, to posit mentally
an unordered set of all the sounds which all the octave equiva-
lents of the real presented pitches would make up. In these
cases, octave equivalence is, for me, superfluous.

The other half of the time, I am afraid that, though I may see
that there is a definable pc/ic set comparison present, I cannot
perform the act of perceiving the sounds presented on the two
sides of an equivalence as members of a conceptual entity
called an unordered pc/ic set. (By comparison, I find that
interpreting events in tonal music as parts of a conceptual
"Schenker" set becomes easier every time I do it. . . which is
part of the reason I still try. ) I can, of course, write out the
stages which illustrate the Forte set-complex relations, but I
question whether the listener should have to study a priori syn-
theses in order to compose-out a relation left unstated in the
music. In these cases, pitch class is (for me) interesting but
undetectable.

The third half of the time, roughly overlapping the seam be-
tween my first two categories, I am intrigued by the presenta-
tion of pitch data in pitch class form, my notions of the possible
a priori formations I might wish to try to bring to the music
are expanded, and I become emboldened to try once again to
hear the precise orientation of all the pitches in a pitch class
(register-free) environment, because the promise that atonal
music will somehow yield to my wish for (tonally remembered)
security of orientation is seductive. But (and I have as much
good will and as good an "ear" as anyone) what happens is
either:

(1) (rarely) I manage to see that a set has been trans-

figured beyond my usual power to recognize such
things aurally; or

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 401

(2) (more often) I conclude that I am trying to find the

sense of the music by looking for what I want to find:
aural security in the pitch domain, when I ought per-
haps to be letting the piece tell me what it is about.

After years of trying various ways to hear the music Forte is

discussing, I conclude that the goal I, they, we seek is the
phenomenological experience of pitch orientation we learned
under tonality to call music, and I conclude that it is an ex-
aggerated quest to try to find, beneath the surface of non-tonal
music, a potential source of pitch coherence which, if we could
only work hard enough, would give us "tonal security". The
essence of natural language and gestalt is that you don't have
to (can't, in fact) work for it. It presents itself.

Idle Questions:

(1) If there is a universal human wish to construct a really

good non-language game involving orientation, pre -
diction, and evaluation of position among pitch-cen-
tered noises across time, then there must be either
(a) one "best" game, or (b) all successful games must
resemble each other ?

(2) What would be the nature of a game involving sounds

valued neither for their pitch content nor for their
associations with reality (semantics)?

(3) I can understand why composers of atonal music might

well have been trying to retain. . retain. . . the sense
that they valued: secure pitch orientation. If we let
steady-state pitch go, what happens to our "analyses"
of music which supposedly rests on pitch?

(4) Music is a behavior. Observing your own behavior

when you are acting musically is the touchstone: you
will get back lies, evasions, echoes of previous "the-
oretical" formulations, but you will be observing the
only thingyou canobserve: yourself. (Not a question. )

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
402

What people can "do" is, in some linguistic parlance, called

performance. What they "know" (in the way of an inner knowl-
edge, a grammar, a set of rules which enables them to pro-
duce, or judge, their own or others' performance) is called
competence. Tonalmusic, as a behavior displayed by millions,
argues that whatever their competence is, it is fairly univer-
sally achievable. It is a truism of linguistics that competence
is implied by performance, but that a person performing does
not necessarily (some say may not, by direct introspection,
ever) know how to state the essence of his competence-nor
may he necessarily be able to state intuitively the connection
between his version of his own rules and his ability to perform
linguistic acts. Using "perform" in the linguistic sense of
"utter", "produce a grammatical sentence", etc., the parallel
action in music would be "speaking"-i. e., improvisation. I
am not sure that we have a developed art of improvising atonal
music; most of it is (has been, thus far) constructed slowly on
paper-a process which allows the composer the luxury of
stop-time aural perusal of his material. Yet when we listen
to it, we are left with our own competence, whatever it is, as
our real-time listening resource as we try to find coherence.

There are two strategems in linguistics, however, which seem

to shed some light upon the nature of competence. One is the
test of native speaker acceptance. Native speakers of a given
language are simply asked if they find a certain utterance ac-
ceptable. I find no difficulty in seeing that process at the heart
of tonal behavior: pedagogy, composing, listening, correcting,
etc.; for non-tonal music (including among others atonal spe-
cies) such a test seems no less meaningful. A different ver-
sion of such a test would be to ask a listener, preferably the
composer,--in the absence of notation or other preparedness-
to distinguish between variants of selected passages on the
basis of what he claimed to be his theory of underlying repre-
sentation. This would be, in fact, the other strategy for de-
limiting competence-the test of minimal pairs. If a person
is confronted with two items which, by definition of the tester,
are somehow structurally different, and the test-taker can't
tell when, if, or how the differentiating factor has been changed,
there is no reason to go on describing the two items as, for
that person, a pair. If a distinction can be discerned, then the
aspect which differentiates the pair (if it canbe isolated; further
pairs may help do so) may be said to be significant and even
structural. Such testing for variants based on differences or
resemblances structured by pc/ic sets has not been carried
out, to my knowledge, in any serious way. I can imagine it,
though: if the event is short, the set small, the presentation

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 403

slow and the variance tightly minimized, the listener very

familiar with the structure being varied (I am visualizing Milton
Babbitt listening to some slow Webern), then perhaps some
degree of assurance as to the role of each pitch in the musical
structure, and even in the underlying set structure, may be
claimed. As the events become larger, certainly as the sets
become larger (when their possible subsets begin to be shared
in large numbers and their differences become smaller), as
the speed and complexity of the presented music become greater,
and the listener less like Milton Babbitt, I venture to predict
that very little accurate pitch or pitch class discrimination is
going on: for most listeners, whatever this music is about,
it is not about pitch.

Then what is it about? What are some other kinds of equiva-

lence ?

Equivalence does not, of course, mean identity. "The game

of tonality is one of predicting what exact kind of not-quite-
identical transformation of some event will now be brought
forth, depending on whether the goal is to continue the present
larger domain (small changes often effect such continuation,
and every listener "knows" which ones will) or to change the
larger domain (literal imitation often will bring that about); a
lovely paradox where non-change signals change, and vice-
versa-and everybody can project at least some of the choices
before they happen." *7 When the tonal listener's expectation
that he will be able to have a constant sense of ownership of
the possible syntactic functions of the next pitch is no longer
granted, the gestalts of sameness, continuation, shape, size,
reversibility, conservation (belief that something is still there
even though it is not now "visible"), interpolation, change of
one parameter/ non-change in another, etc., still obtain. Two
tones or sets of tones may be made in some sense related,
equivalent, surrogates or clients of each other, by so many
means other than the undeniably useful fact of having compar-
able position in some pitch/interval domains: they can both be
first in a group, last, highest, on the beat, off the beat in the
same way, longest, played by the harp, doubled in octaves,
played alone, three octaves or three seconds away from every-
thing else, repetitions of themselves conspicuously present
recently, tops of thirds, followed by more than a step, etc.,
etc. (any composer could extend this list to fifty items in five

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
404

minutes). These are the gestalts which account, even in tonal

music, even in random music, for the sense of nonrandomness
you hear at all times.

It is evident that I, for one, cannot put upon pitch class the
analytic burden Forte does. I must make it clear that I feel
indebted to him, however, for raising and defining the whole
matter of pc/ic set equivalency so explicitly. As I proceed to
the second of my self-assigned tasks, that of discussing some
of the words and lists in the book itself from the standpoint of
clarity and usefulness, I would like to stress the fact that,
though I will again be talking in negatives, I do so with great
respect for the author.

In a nutshell, the problem seems to me to be one of overgen-

eralization. I will mention only two instances of that tendency:
the question of inversion, and the postulation of the so-called
basic interval pattern (bip).

To say that sets which are literal inversions of each other are
equivalent, as defined by the author, seems unexceptionable.
But I have trouble with inversion in varying circumstances.
For small sets, say the three note sets, it seems unhelpful not
to recognize that, far from being taken as equivalents, the two
forms of those seven sets which have recognizable inversions
are taken in practice to be quite dissimilar. The last thing
anyone notices about a major and a minor triad is that they are
literal inversions of each other; it is true, but it is less im-
portant than that they are not-quite-identical replicas of each
other. The important mapping is not root of major to fifth of
minor, etc. but root to root, fifth to fifth, and third to variant
third. In those cases where the set is small enough so that
inverted sets can be differentiated, they are by no means found
to be just "inversionally equivalent". (See my later comment
about the omission of prime forms for inverted sets from the
list in Forte's Appendix 1. ) For sets of larger size, I am up
against my own disbelief that anyone can really discriminate
between presented instances of inversional equivalents, unless
the configuration of the presentation very strongly emphasizes
the inversional relation. *8 But that, of course, is an echo of
my point about octaves being brought to view by presentation.
A further, no doubt obvious, point: using configuration as the
locus of comparability operations, it is clear that literal

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 405

inversion, as with literal sequence by transposition, by no

means holds rank as the most interesting kind of transformation.

The basic interval pattern (bip) is another instance of a useful

concept being, in my view, overgeneralized to the point of no
return. To call attention to the surface of an ordered succes-
sion, to say that the intervals of note-to-note adjacencies are
somehow hierarchically more "important" than the rest of the
total content of the unordered set from which the succession
was presumably "generated" (if it wasn't, then the unordered
set cannot be called an underlying, "structural" representa-
tion) is, surely, helpful. But Forte, in pursuit of generality,
then goes beyond specificity in one understandable and two
strange ways: first he assigns the successive intervals to their
respective interval classes (I won't question that here); then,
however, he deletes the direction of the surface intervals (so
that, say, C-C#-D# becomes a "1 2", but so does C-C#-B !);
and he then reassembles the disembodied interval classes into
an unordered array. I don't know what it tells me to know that a
presented succession "contains" or "was made from" such an
array, nor that many other sets are capable of making such an
array available. But if it means that somehow when I hear the
first interval of a presented succession I ought to be able to
bring to mind the notion that I have just heard some member
of some such array, and thereby should have some sense of
what the total content of the array is, then I give up, because
that isn't what happens. What happens is that only with specific
features of order, register, and direction as part of the gestalt
I am either trying to learn or trying to recognize can I make
any musical sense of the presented sounds. It is true that they
can be assigned to defined sets of things called pcs and ics,
but it doesn't seem to matter much. That is too harshly said,
but among the things I admire in Forte is his forthrightness.

The two most used sections of the book, for every reader, will
surely be the Appendix 1, a list of the "prime forms" and "vec-
tors" of all the pitch class sets of cardinality three through
nine, and the Glossary, to which one will often turn for explana-
tion of one or another of the many terms brought into music
analytic discourse from mathematical parlance by the author.
Here again, while noting the usefulness of these sections, I
will offer some comment. (A quick example of the kind of thing
the Forte lists clarify, involving the forty-four Hauer "tropes",
is given in my Appendix II. )

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
406

Appendix 1

As the book is, in some senses, a large re-working of Forte's

1964 article, so the tables of set forms have been redone, some-
times for the better, and sometimes not.

(1) In layout, the 1964 tables had some advantages over

the present format. Each complementary set of tables
(the three note sets vs. the nines, etc. ) had its own
visual space. We now read directly from 3-12 to 4-1,
etc.

(2) The 1964 tables gave the number of pitch sets (trans-
positions and inversions) for each distinct set in a
column totaled for each set size. The present table
gives this information only for sets which do not have
the "usual" 24 forms, in a parenthesis next to the set
"name".

(3) The 1964 tables gave data for sets of cardinality two
through ten; the present tables cover three through
nine.

(4) The names of the items then and now.

(a) The terminology in 1964 for the position of a set

in the group of sets of like size used a heading
"Distinct X-Note Sets" and then a column headed
"set number" containing integers which named
each set according to an algorithm for ordering
the various sets. The new table calls the "set
number" the set's "name": 3-1, 8-2, etc.

The new "names" are a reflection of what one has

been doing with the set numbers all along: adding
a prefix for cardinality. The "name" still tells
nothing about the set except its size and its posi-
tion on a list. That's acceptable to a computer,
perhaps.

(b) What was called "normal order" is now just called

"pcs" (of the "prime forms"). A "prime" form
is a "normal order" transposed so that the first
pc is 0. Both "normal" and "prime", though
probably neutral (arbitrary) in mathematical
terminology, have odd connotations in ordinary
language, and tell us nothing about the construct

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 407

in view. A "prime form" is simply a "pitch proto-

type" or a "pitch example". As such, it is per-
haps the most useful of the several ways one can
refer to a set. A set number means nothing if
youhaven't memorized its meaning; a vector tells
you quite a bit, but it is hard to "visualize" a set
from a vector reference unless you have memor-
ized it; a pitch example allows one quite easily to
"see", in mind's ear, a version of the sound ob-
jects the set encompasses. Because of Forte's
insistence that his sets be referred to by set num-
ber, all readers will want to keep a sharp pencil
and a copy of Appendix 1 in hand in order to an-
notate the book by writing in "prime forms" next
to "set numbers" in the text. Until they have the
Appendix memorized, that is.

(c) "Vector", another term conveying little about the

object (why not "ic content" ?), is listed as in 1964.
A number of errors have been silently corrected;
a list of corrections would be useful.

(d) "Z" numbers. I will grant that I can't think of an

isolated word which sums up the property called
"Z". ("Anisomorph" ?) Nor do I know why Z sets
come only in pairs. What seems inexplicable,
though, is the fact that, while remedying the
omission of the second member of each Z pair
from the 1964 tables, and even pointing out this
correction (footnote, p. 21), the author has entered
the "other" members of each pair under new set
names. Thus the two forms of, say, the all-
interval te trachord are not 4 -Z15(a) and 4 -Z15 (b),
but 4-Z15 and 4-Z29. In the hexachord portion
of the new table, the Z pairs are at least aligned
horizontally, although their names are non-re-
flecting. In the 4 and 8, 5 and 7 lists, the odd
Z's just drop to the end of the ordering without a
hint (unless you make a comparison of vectors)
as to their siblings' locations.

(e) Finally, since about half of the sets one decides

to look up are in inverted form, it would have
been helpful to print prime forms for inversions:
013 and 023, etc.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
408

Glossary

In addition to indexing terms and musical examples, the author

has included a Glossary, wherein brief "definitions" of forty-
seven technical terms (either borrowed from mathematics,
coined by the author, or taken over from his own and others'
previous articles), which might be less than self-explanatory
to most readers, are assembled. The "definitions" are mini-
mal. They do not, in most cases, connect the term with any-
thing resembling a "common language" version of the concept
denoted, but are restricted to statements connecting one term
to the next technical term in some argument. Some readers
will wish to amend the Glossary by adding page numbers for
text reference and, probably, some sort of home-made ex-
panded definitions (possibly involving brief examples) to remind
themselves of the traditional or common language meaning in-
volved. Forte's employment of a large and almost entirely
new vocabulary is motivated, perhaps, by a laudable wish to
express his system in words free from archaic and in some
cases ambiguous connotation. But that language, and the gen-
erallyhortatory style of the book, places a considerable burden
on the reader.

It would be unjust to close without recognizing that I have quite

failed to point out many of the merits of the book. Because I
think that Forte makes far too much of pitch class, I may have
gone too far in trying to argue against it. The book, viewed
simply in its own terms, is an extraordinary accomplishment.
Every serious student of analytic technique will have to come
to grips with it in some way, and we will all be the better for
the encounter. It would be contrary to my purpose if any reader
of this review were to take my comments as advice to ignore
the book.

I said at the beginning that I was not quoting Forte's history

idly. . that I saw lingering effects of his interests in Schenker,
atonal music, and computers in the present work. I would like
to amplify that remark in closing.

Recently I heard Milton Babbitt informally but eloquently say

that he saw Schenker' and Schoenberg as having taken up, in
some senses, the same task: that of re-working their vision
of tonality in order to save it. Schenker re-composed the pieces

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 409

as analyses (the theorist as ultimate conservator of a system

under attack); Schoenberg re-wrote tonality using "new" ma-
terial (the composer extending the system rather than repudiate
it). It is my current working opinion that Schenker succeeded
(because his task was a possible one) and that Schoenberg did
not (because his task was wrong-headed). I therefore find
Forte's attempt to find in Schoenberg's music the coherence
that Schenker found in tonal music doubly fragile. Whether or
not Schenker thought so, I submit that octave equivalence is
not, in gestalt terms, the primitive of tonal music; it is just
an experience which tonal music is good at presenting. Real
persistences of event and configuration form the basis for the
mental perception of coherence in both (any) musics. The
search for more "primitive" elements has repeatedly fallen
into the morass of assigning a "misplaced concreteness" to
items easily designated by numbers. I suggest that this hy-
postatization of referential terms lends itself to (flows from)
the use of those computer languages which accept (require)
data in numerical array. Whereas the numbers assigned by
Schenker to psychological events have by now become accept-
able, not as numbers, but as simple signs for aggregates of
behavior, for me the numbers in pc/ic sets remain, for the
most part, dim referents of very partially operable constructs.
I use them only with great caution as qualia interchangeable
with my own observed elements of musical process.

The game of thinking about sound-relationships (without lin-

guistic or existential affiliation) is called music. The game of
thinking about numbers is called mathematics. The two strata
are essentially detached from one another.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 410

Appendix I Publications of Allen Forte

Books

CONTEMPORARY TONE-STRUCTURES. New York: Columbia, 1955.

THE COMPOSITIONAL MATRIX. Baldwin, N.Y.: MTNA, 1961. Reprinted by DaCapo

Press, 1974.

TONAL HARMONY IN CONCEPT AND PRACTICE. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1963.

WORKBOOK IN HARMONIC COMPOSITION. With Alfred B. Kuhn. New York: Holt,

Rinehart and Winston, 1963.

SNOBOL3 PRIMER: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

LANGUAGE. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967. Japanese trans., 1972.

THE STRUCTURE OF ATONAL MUSIC. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

Translation

Libretto of Schoenberg's MOSES UND ARON. Schott, 1956. Columbia Records,

1958; and in K.H. Woerner's SCHOENBERG'S MOSES UND ARON. London: Faber
& Faber, 1959.

Articles

"Composing with Electrons at Cologne, " HIGH FIDELITY, May, 1956.

"The Structural Origin of Exact Tempi in the Brahms-Haydn Variations, " THE
MUSIC REVIEW, May, 1957.

"A Criterion for a Modern Libretto," BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN COMPOSERS

ALLIANCE VII/4(1958).

"The Text of Schoenberg's MOSES UND ARON, " COLUMBIA RECORDS, 1958.

"Schenker's Conception of Musical Structure," JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY III/1

(1959).

"Bartok's 'Serial' Composition," THE MUSICAL QUARTERLY, April, 1960; and in

PROBLEMS OF MODERN MUSIC. Edited by P.H. Lang. New York: W.W. Norton,
1962.

"Context and Continuity in an Atonal Work, " PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC, 1/2
(1963).

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 411

"Music as a Means of Non-Verbal Communication, " GENERAL SEMANTICS BUL-

LETIN, Numbers 30 & 31, 1963/64.

"A Theory of Set-Complexes for Music." JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY VII / 2(1964).

"The Domain and Relations of Set-complex Theory," JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY

IX/1(1965).

"The Role of the Study of Music Theory in the Development of Musical Understand-
"
ing, CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROJECT, 1965.
" ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA.
"Atonality,
" ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA.
"Bartok,

"A Program for the Analytical Reading of Scores, " JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY
X/1(1966).

"A Syntax-Based Score Reading Program, " PROJECT MAC TECHNICAL REPORT
TR-32, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April, 1967.

"The Programming " COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES,

Language SNOBOL3,
May, 1967.
"Music and Computing: The Present Situation, " PROCEEDINGS OF THE FALL
JOINT COMPUTER CONFERENCE, 1967; and COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES,
September, 1967.

"Computer-Implemented Analysis of Musical Structure," COMPUTER APPLICA-

TIONS IN MUSIC. Edited by Gerald Lefkoff. Morgantown: West Virginia University
Library, 1967.
"The Structure of Atonal Music: Practical Aspects of a Computer-Oriented Research
" MUSICOLOGY AND THE COMPUTER. Edited
Project, by Barry S. Brook. New
York: The City University of New York Press, 1970.

"Atonality, " SOHLMANS MUSIKLEXICON (Stockholm), 1973.

"Sets and Nonsets in Schoenberg's Atonal Music," PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC

XI/2(1972).

"The Basic Interval Patterns, " JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY XVII/2(1973).

"Heinrich Schenker, " GROVES DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. 6th edi-
tion.

"Analysis Symposium: Webern, Orchestral Pieces (1913), Movement I (Bewegt),"

JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY XVIII/1(1974).

"Theory," DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC. Edited by John Vinton. New

York: E.P. Duttori & Co., 1974.

Book reviews in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

NOTES, JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY, YALE REVIEW, COMPUTERS AND THE
HUMANITIES.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
412

Appendix II

So far as I know, Josef Matthias Hauer's 44 tropes (partitions

of the 12 pc set into complementary hexachords) have not been
compared with Forte's 35 (or 50) hexachords. Hauer was not
proceeding under a rubric of interval class, so he did not know
(or care) that he had not pruned his list to the 35 hexachords
of differing ic content; indeed, he may not necessarily have
had all 35 in his 44. Nor did he recognize the distinctness of
what Forte calls Z forms: two sets having identical ic content
but unmappable configuration. The 15 Z paired hexachords
are, of course, the non-combinatorial one's. So Hauer did not
press on to find the 50 combinatorially distinct forms, either.

The first table in this appendix lists the 44 Hauer tropes, as

found in Eschman'-9, transposed into 0 through 11 pc notation.
The second table compares the Hauer tropes with the Forte
hexachords. Parentheses surround Forte sets which Hauer
did not state as prime (first) hexachords. Hauer sets marked
"a" are tropes which he listed separately, although they are
usually cyclic permutations or inversions of Forte sets-in
eight cases Hauer thus made two tropes from one hexachord.
Interestingly, each of those involves the first member of a
Forte Z pair. The ninth "extra" trope is number 22, the only
instance where Hauer found both members of a Z pair, 6-Z13
and 6-Z43. In four more instances, Hauer lists only an "al-
tered" form of some Forte set without having also listed it in
a form identical to Forte's. And in one case, trope number
31, Hauer's trope takes the form of the second member of a
Forte Z pair without listing the first. Thus Hauer's rubric,
basically an informal "scalar" construct, did arrive at some
form of all 35 hexachords, stated 32 of the 50 distinct normal
orders (prime forms) exactly as Forte does, and in every case
but one preferred the first of a Z pair to the second.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
TABLE 1 From CHANGING
Copyright 1968, E
Used by permission

Hauer's 44 Tropes

1. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 23. 0 1 2 5
2. 0 1 2 3 4 6 5 7 8 9 10 11 24. 0 3 4 5
3. 0 1 2 3 5 6 4 7 8 9 10 11 25. 0 1 3 4
4. 0 1 2 4 5 6 3 7 8 9 10 11 26. 0 1 4 5
5. 0 1 3 4 5 6 2 7 8 9 10 11 27. 0 1 3 4
6. 0 1 2 3 6 7 4 5 8 9 10 11 28. 0 1 3 4
7. 0 1 2 5 6 7 3 4 8 9 10 11 29. 0 1 3 4
8. 0 1 2 6 7 8 3 4 5 9 10 11 30. 0 1 3 4
9. 0 1 2 3 5 7 4 6 8 9 10 11 31. 0 1 3 4
10. 0 1 2 4 6 7 3 5 8 9 10 11 32. 0 1 4 5
11. 0 1 3 4 6 7 2 5 8 9 10 11 33. 0 1 4 5
12. 0 2 3 4 6 7 1 5 8 9 10 11 34. 0 1 4 5
13. 0 1 3 5 6 7 2 4 8 9 10 11 35. 0 1 3 5
14. 0 2 3 5 6 7 1 4 8 9 10 11 36. 0 1 5 6
15. 0 1 2 4 5 7 3 6 8 9 10 11 37. 0 1 3 5
16. 0 1 3 4 5 7 2 6 8 9 10 11 38. 0 1 3 6
17. 0 2 3 4 5 7 1 6 8 9 10 11 39. 0 1 2 4
18. 0 1 2 4 5 8 3 6 7 9 10 11 40. 0 1 2 4
19. 0 1 3 4 5 8 2 6 7 9 10 11 41. 0 2 4 5
20. 0 1 2 5 6 8 3 4 7 9 10 11 42. 0 1 3 5
21. 0 1 4 5 6 8 2 3 7 9 10 11 43. 0 2 3 5
22. 0 1 2 4 7 8 3 5 6 9 10 11 44. 0 2 4 6

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 414

TABLE 2 Tropes and Hexachords

Forte Hauer Forte

6-1 1
6-2 2
6-Z3 3 5a (6-Z36)
6-Z4 4 (6-Z37)
6-5 6
6-Z6 7 (6-Z38)
6-7 8
6-8 17
6-9 9
6-Z10 16 12a (6-Z39)
6-Zll 15 14a (6-Z40)
6-Z12 10 13a (6-Z41)
6-Z13 11 (6-Z42)
6-14 19 24a
6-15 18
6-16 21
6-Z17 20 22 6-Z43
6-18 23
6-Z19 25 26a (6-Z44)
6-20 34
6-21 40a
6-22 39
6-Z23 28a (6-Z45)
6-Z24 27 29a (6-Z46)
6-Z25 35 37a (6-Z47)
6-Z26 36a (6-Z48)
6-27 30

(6-Z28) 31 6-Z49

6-Z29 33a (6-Z50)

6-30 38
6-31 32

6-32 41
6-33 43
6-34 42
6-35 44

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 415

REFERENCES

1 David Beach, "A Schenker Bibliography, " JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY, 13

(1969), 2-27.

2 Richard Teitelbaum, "Intervallic Relations in Atonal Music, " JOURNAL OF

MUSIC THEORY, 9(1965), 72-127.

3 Thomas Clifton, "Training in Music Theory: Process and Product," JOURNAL

OF MUSIC THEORY, 13(1969), 63.

4 So the conflict is between Forte the Schenkerian, treating register as discrim-

inable, and Forte the Schoenbergian, treating pitch as without register.

5 At a more sophisticated compositional and analytical level, one can see, in

tonalpieces, processes which make various registral members of a pitch class
non-equivalent in role; e.g., certain registral levels reserved for pitch class
X only in the role of degree class Y, or certain levels of a degree class filled
only by particular variants of that degree, etc.
6 For a discussion of the relation between models of a behavioral structure and
the structure itself, and the relative strength of comparisons between various
classes of models, see Benjamin Boretz, "Meta-Variations: Studies in the
Foundations of Musical Thought (I),' PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC, 8(1969),
51ff.

7 Richmond Browne, "Notes Toward An Outline of a Tentative Approach to a

Comparative Analysis of Some Preliminary Studies Leading to a Possible Syn-
thesis of Hitherto Insufficiently Explored Modi Operandi in the Area of Further
Speculation as to the Nature of the Circumstances Surrounding the Beginning
Stages of a Prolegomena to be Undertaken in the Interests of Clarifying the In-
tentions Which Might Seem to Motivate the Initiation of Investigations into the
Structure of Certain Problems Intimately Connected with Basic Research in
Selected Dimensions of Musical Thought, " unpublished paper.

8 I regret that Forte has clearly abrogated the old practice of calling, say, a
minor sixth the "inversion" of a major third. The inversion of a major third
is, properly, a major third taken in the opposite direction; a minor sixth ought
to be called its "octave complement".
9 Karl Eschman, CHANGING FORMS IN MODERN MUSIC, 2nd edition (Boston,
1968), 85.

This content downloaded from 141.20.212.219 on Fri, 01 May 2015 22:08:10 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions