PAUL NAUERT

Timespan Hierarchies and Posttonal Pitch Structure : a Composer's Strategies

Abstract

"Sounds organized in time" is a popular definition of music, but one can equally well say that music is "time organized by sounds". One form that this organization can take is a nested hierarchy of timespans, consisting, at the largest level, of one timespan containing the entire musical work and, at the smallest level, of timespans articulated by its note-to-note details. Intermediate levels in this hierarchy can be shaped by a variety of musical factors.

The author's compositional practice coordinates aspects of pitch structure with various levels in a timespan hierarchy, using an eclectic assortment of techniques. Musical applications of set theory provide ways to model these techniques, each of which requires some aspect of pitch content to remain constant within timespans and to change at timespan boundaries. A variety of pitch features can act in this manner ; in addition to literal pitch class (pc) and pitch content, a timespan can be associated with a family of intervallically similar pc or pitch sets, with pc or pitch-set progressions based on a particular intervallic profile, and with families of intervallically similar progressions.
The author will describe several of these possibilities and illustrate them with examples from his recent compositions.

Biography of Paul Nauert