Pitch Dispersal and the Perception of Tonal Strength in Schoenberg's Oeuvre

ANTA, J. FERNANDO

Music Perception

University of California Press

Lugar: California; Año: 2017 p. 541 - 556

0730-7829

The idea that listeners´ tonal/atonal sense represents a special case of multiple causation was examined, and the following hypothesis was tested: pitch dispersal (i.e., distance in pitch between successive tones) is a secondary determiner of tonality and atonality, the former being strengthened by low levels of pitch dispersal and the latter by high levels of pitch dispersal. A correlational study was conducted in which 8 trained listeners judged the degree to which 78 melodies extracted from A. Schoenberg´s oeuvre convey a tonic. In line with the present hypothesis, the results suggest that listeners´ judgments were influenced not only by consonance or pitch class distributions (i.e., by underlying ´scales´), as expected from previous research, but also by pitch dispersal. Interestingly, it was also found that Schoenberg´ melodies became not only less diatonic over time, but also more dispersed, which suggests that the joint manipulation of pitch class distributions and pitch dispersal might have been a strategy on Schoenberg´s part to weaken the sense of tonality. Some of the key musicological, theoretical, and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.