Axis System - Introduction

Introduction

In classical and common-practice systems of harmony, certain chord substitutions are recognised and are commonly made use of by composers and arrangers: "certain chords have been able to act as substitutes for others; for example, the submediant chord ... can replace the tonic, most familiarly in an interrupted cadence." In his analyses of Bartók's music, Lendvaï identifies a novel set of tonal substitutions; substitutions that relate chords and keys in a flat mediant relation to one another, and also those related by the tritone, a tonal relationship "normally regarded as the most remote pitch/chord/key area from the tonic." Lendvaï argued that these relationships had a naturalistic basis (that is, were not merely an analytical or compositional contrivance), and argued that many of Bartók's compositions made essential use tonal substitutability he described. By establishing the veracity of this novel set of relationships, Lendvaï "attempts to 'explain' Bartók's chromaticism within a tonally functional model."

Read more about this topic:  Axis System

Famous quotes containing the word introduction:

    My objection to Liberalism is this—that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind—namely, politics—of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.
    Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)

    We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: “When did the queen reign over China?” This whimsical and harmless scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.
    —Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)