The Unfolding of Tonality in the Music of Bela Bartok David Cooper Music Analysis, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), 21-38. Stable URL: btp//links jstor.org/sici?sici=0262-5245% 28199803%2917%3A1%3C21%3ATUOTIT%3E2.0.COW3B2-2 Music Analysis is cureently published by Blackwell Publishing, ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.hml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor.org/journals/black. hum Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals, For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupswww jstor.org/ Mon Nov 1 19:18:35 2004DAVID COOPER ‘THe UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE Music oF BELA BARTOK I ‘The music of Béla Bartok has attracted interest from analysts because of its apparent retention of residual tonal centricity within a musical context which is sometimes densely chromatic. The means by which such residual tonality is expressed in Bartok’s music has been considered by a number of writers in- cluding George Perle, Elliott Antokoletz and Paul Wilson.’ In 1943 the com- poser remarked that his music was ‘always based on a single fundamental tone, in its sections as well as its whole’, and alluded to a technique he described as ‘polymodal chromaticism’, which allowed the construction of chromatic me- lodic lines and chord structures by the superimposition or folding together of different modes that share the same final - the diatonic folk modes, ‘model’ scales such as the octatonic, and the whole-tone scale. Wilson, however, warns that ‘the application of the concept of mode to non-linear passages or to con- texts in which a final is difficult to select can raise more questions than it an- swers’, citing as an example the opening of the Fourth Quartet. As a special and extreme case of the use of the polymodal-chromatic method, consider the twelve-note theme from the Second Violin Concerto of 1937-8. Ex. 1 shows the idea in its first manifestation at bars 73-5 of the first movement, where it is played by the solo violin. Throughout this short section, a sustained A, played in octaves by first and second horns, supports the melody and affirms its tonal orientation. In each of the three bars, the ‘melodic line can be shown to derive from a different mode whose final is A, Ex. 1. Barték’s Second Violin Concerto, twelve-note theme at bars 73-5 of the first movement, with possible modal sources Music Analysis, 17/i (1998) 21 (© Blctrll Publishers Lid 1998 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Rosd, Oxford OX TF, UK22 DAVID cooPER namely the Acolian, octatonic and gypsy modes, with the final Ds, when con- sidered in the context of the previous three notes, deriving from A minor. Whilst Bartok’s ‘middle period’ compositions, in particular the works writ- ten between approximately 1919 and 1930, tend to be more problematic when, considered simply from a tonal perspective, earlier and later works have more obvious tonal resonances. References to practices such as the use of quasi- cadential figures, cyclic progressions, triadic harmony and sequential passages in these works encourage the impression of both localised and global tonal centres. In order to substantiate assertions of such vestigial tonal traces, a measure is required against which the degree of residual tonality may be judged. Such a measure has been developed as a by-product of work by Kia Ng, Roger Boyle and myself on an Optical Music Recognition (OMR) system at the University of Leeds. The process of OMR involves the scanning and digitising of printed sheet music, and its automated reconstruction as a MIDI file which contains the musical content in a format suitable for printing, synthesised performance or analysis. In some circumstances, artefacts pro- duced by the scanning process may make it difficult accurately to resolve the key signature, and in order to deal with this problem an algorithm for key- signature detection was devised.‘ For the literate musician, the deduction of the single key centre which governs individual movements of works written in the period of common-practice tonality is a trivial matter. It is usually suffi- cient to glance at the key signature (or at least the key signature associated with the opening and closing passages) and note the terminal cadential structure. Even in the absence of explicit key signatures, locating the tonality of the vast, majority of unambiguously tonal pieces can scarcely be an issue for the average reader of this journal. However, discussions of late- and apparently post-tonal ‘works can often be problematised by references to latent tonal centres whose existence may be more difficult to verify. A substantial knowledge base of musical information would be required for computer to simulate ‘intelli- gently’ the apparently intuitive response of a musician whose ‘intuition’ is in fact the result of many years of training. Given the enormity of the task of generating such a knowledge base, it was felt that a statistical approach to the problem would prove simpler. ‘The 48 preludes and fugues of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, books I and I, in MIDI file format (not generated by the OMR system) provided an initial data set for analysis.> At this stage of development the MIDI files included all accidentals played in a piece, though the key-signature meta-event (if in- cluded) was ignored.® The files produced by the OMR system actually contain just those accidentals which do not appear in the key signature, and a more complex version of the algorithm is required to resolve the tonality.” Two types of information were extracted from the MIDI files: the frequency of occur- rence of each of the twelve pcs, and the total duration associated with each pe (© Blackwell Publishers Ld. 1998, ‘Music Analysis, 17H (1998)‘THe UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE Music OF BELA BARTOK 23, Fig. 1. Semitone offset from tonic compared to sort index (ranking by duration) for the data set ‘Sart Index o1234 Note iss number (the sum of all individual durations).® Each pc was ranked from 0 to 11 ac- cording to its total duration, the pc with the longest total duration being given the lowest numerical ranking (this method of ranking makes use of the com- ‘mon practice in many computer languages of starting the numbering of indices and counters from 0). Initial analysis of the data confirmed the intuition that the tonic was likely to be within the three lowest-ranked pes (Fig. 1). In the first pass of the algorithm for automatic key signature detection, the ‘weight’ of the top three tonic candidates is measured.” The weight of a tonic is, defined as the sum of its own rank (as tonic) and the rank of its dominant (i.e. the rank of the pe a perfect fifth higher), plus the absolute (unsigned) value of the difference of these tonic and dominant rankings. For example, given the hypothetical rankings for the set of pes in Table 1, the weightings of the three numerically lowest-ranked candidates (C, F and G) are 2, 4 and 8 respectively: ‘Table 1. Hypothetical rankings for a set of pes based on total durations piteh-class ranking 0@ ° 1(ch 10 20) 30) 4® 5® 6D 7G) 8 GD 9) 10a n@ 4 7 3 2 1 1 8 5 8 6 Music Analysis, 171i (1998) (© Blackwell Pubihers Lid. 199824 Davi CooPER C=0 G=1 sum=1 difference=1 sum + difference = 2 F=2 C=0 sum=2 difference=2 sum +difference=4 G=1 D=4 sum=5 difference=3 sum + difference =8. ‘The lower the weight, the more likely is the candidate to be the real tonic. This empirically-derived rule reflects the tendency of the tonic and dominant to be low-ranked pes (because they are usually heard most often, having the longest total duration), and to have similar rankings. The modality is simply deter mined by comparing the relative rankings of the major and minor thirds above the presumed tonic. If the lower ranked mediant is minor, then the modality is assumed to be minor, if the lower ranked mediant is major, then the modality is, considered major.'° If the two forms of the mediant have the same ranking, the two forms of the submediant are then considered, a low-ranking pc 8 (‘minor 6th’) implying a minor key, a low-ranking pe 9 (‘major 6th’) implying a major key. ‘This unrefined version of the algorithm proved to be accurate with consider- ably more than 90% of the data set; to increase its efficiency further, a set of refined rules was introduced for a second pass. In a very small number of cases the basic algorithm erroneously nominated the relative major, relative minor or dominant as the tonic key. As far as the simple estimation of the key signature ‘was concerned, the first two cases were clearly unproblematic, but the third required further consideration. Four further tests were introduced which, al- though justified by reference to the conventions of common-practice tonality, originated in an analysis of the total-duration data."! In the second pass, the three rival candidate tonics (CTs) ranked second, third and fourth by the proc- ess outlined above are tested in turn against the initially estimated tonic (IET), and only if a candidate tonic passes all the appropriate tests can it replace the IET as the finally-determined tonic. Given that the vast majority of pieces were resolved accurately on the initial pass which simply weighted tonic and dominant total durations, it might tenta- tively be suggested that this first level of analysis isolates those works in which a single unambiguous tonal centre is most unequivocally expressed. Pieces re- quiring a second stage of processing to resolve the key centre can perhaps be regarded as being less clear-cut tonally. A four-point scale from 0 to 3 is pro- posed which ranks the finally-determined tonality by its position in the first- stage weightings, and which can be regarded as a measure of confidence in the proposed tonality. Thus, for instance, if the initial processing ranks tonics in the order C (0), G (1), F (2) and E (3), and the finally-determined tonic is F, it is assigned a tonal weight of 2. ‘As can be seen from the foregoing discussion, the algorithm was not derived from, nor was it an attempt to promote, a model of the cognitive processes, (© Blackwell Publishers Ld. 1998 Music Analysis, 171i (1998)‘Tar UNFOLDING OF ToNALITY IN THE Music oF BéLa BarroK 25 Fig. 2. Average rankings for the data set derived from Fig. 1 (solid line) and the average of Krumhans!’s major and minor profiles (dotted line)!® Ranking Wore clase ort sas ete ot associated with the determination of an underlying tonality. It was intended to provide a pragmatic solution to a specific technical problem, and has proved to be 100% successful with a considerably enlarged data set consisting of several hundred MIDI files, including The Well-Tempered Clavier books I and II, the ‘complete two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias of J. S. Bach, Chopin’s 24 Preludes Op. 28, and the individual movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (as examples of large-scale forms). In a purely mechanical and musically unintelligent way it is able to simulate the process of key-signature detection with considerable accuracy. Given sufficient data, the algorithm also generally deals satisfactorily with segments of a musical texture, whether individual chords (or ‘vertical aggregates’), melodic fragments or contrapuntal Passages. Nonetheless, the close correlation between perceived tonal centres and the ‘output of the algorithm invites comparison with proposed psychological struc~ tures. The algorithm’s indifference to the registral placement of pitches and their relative temporal positions aligns it to psychological models described as ‘static’ by David Butler,'? by which he means those models which ‘do not re- gard the temporal and registral relations of pitches that we hear and/or con- ceive as crucial clues that help us form our mental representations of pitch relations in tonal music’,"? The most familiar model of this kind is Carol Krumhans!’s, which makes use of subjective ‘response profiles’ derived from probe-tone experiments in which listeners were asked to rate how well a note fitted as the terminal event in a musical context such as a rising or falling scale, a tonic triad or cadential progression." The resulting major profile has pro- nounced maxima at the tonic and dominant, and the minor profile also has @ prominent mediant.'5 Fig, 2, the averaging of the data in Fig. 1, with Krum- hans!’s major and minor profiles (dotted line) superimposed and inverted so that they lie in the same orientation as the averaged data, displays equivalent troughs at note-classes 0 and 7 (tonic and dominant) for both plots. Common ‘maxima (representing pcs which have the lowest total duration) lie at pitches 1 (lat supertonic/sharp tonic) and 6 (tritone). In this context itis interesting to Music Analysis, 171i (1998) (© Blackwell Publishers Lid. 199826 Davi cooPER observe that the process of key detection may be simplified by the use of a method which compares the ‘diatonic sums’ of rankings for each note of the chromatic scale.'” For example, given the data from Table 1 (C 0, C# 10, D 4, #7, E 3, F 2, F# 11, G 1, G48, A 5, Af 9, B 6), the diatonic sum for C major would be 21 (0+4+3+2+145+6), that of F major would be 24, and that of Bb major 28. The lowest diatonic sum is likely to be a strong candidate as tonic."® It was found that with unambiguously tonal works such as Bach’s The Well- Tempered Clavier this method proves extremely successful, and provides levels of accuracy similar to those of the algorithm. It also deals very satisfactorily with short melodic fragments of three to six bars in length, such as those used by Butler in a key identification experiment.!? 1 Given the robustness of the algorithm when dealing with common-practice tonal music, it proved tempting to test material in which the expression of tonality is deliberately more equivocal. The piano works written by Béla Bartok in 1908, and in particular the Ten Easy Pieces, provide an interesting test bed for the algorithm, with their meshing of diatonic, folk-mode, whole-tone and chromatic elements within a musical style in which a central organising tonal- ity can be usually be sensed. With this repertoire, however, a difference of re- sponse was noted between the algorithm discussed in this article and the diatonic-sum technique mentioned above, the former more closely correlating to the subjective response of listeners familiar with Bartdk’s musical language. It is probable that the greater degree of success is due to the prioritisation of pcs 0 and 7 (‘tonic’ and ‘dominant’) by the algorithm at the expense of other diatonic pitches. Given Bart6k’s polymodal-chromatic method described above, these are the scale degrees which are common, for instance, to six out of seven of the diatonic modes (only the rarely used Locrian has a diminished fifth), four out of seven of the parallel folk modes sometimes described as eptatonia secunda, the 1:3 model scale (e.g. C-Df-E-G-AJ-B) and the penta- tonic mode in its common ‘Hungarian’ form (e.g. A~C-D-E-G).?° The super imposition of modes with common finals usually generates considerable chromatic throughput which renders the diatonic-sum method less effective.?! Intervals such as the tritone, which is found in the whole-tone scale, the coctatonic scale and two forms of heptatonia secunda, are actively discriminated against by the diatonic-sum method, rather than being passively ignored as is the case with the algorithm, and the response is thus skewed from the per- ‘idence of each pe for the modes listed above (solid line) with the averaged ranking data from Fig. 2 superimposed (dotted line).22 The most obvious common features of the two graphs are associated (© Blackwell Pablahers Lid 1998 Music Analysis, 17/1 (1998)‘Tue UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE Music OF BELA BARTOK 27 Fig. 3. Incidence of pes 0-11 for a range of modes used by Barték (solid line), and average rankings from the data derived from the examination of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (dotted line) Lowest Incidence Highest Incidence 7234567 89 101 with pcs 0, 1, 2 and 7. This suggests that tonality in polymodal-chromatic mu sic is likely to be expressed through the prioritisation of pes 0 and 7 in much the same way as it is in tonal music, though the lower incidence among the different modes of pe 11 (‘major 7th’) than pe 10 (‘minor 7th’), and of pe 9 Cmajor 6th’) than pc 8 (‘minor 6th’) will tend to reduce the efficacy of the diatonic-sum method.” The set of short movements, Ten Easy Pieces, which was written to introduce the student with fairly modest technical abilities to a contemporary musical style, actually contains eleven pieces, the opening number being titled ‘Dedica- tion’, Of the eleven, six (numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 10) are relatively unambigu- ‘ous tonally, whereas ‘Dedication’ and the other four movements are somewhat less clear-cut. In order to test the efficacy of the algorithm, performances of these five movements were recorded in real time from a MIDI keyboard using a sequencing program (the quantisation function having been disabled), and saved in MIDI file format." The files were then passed to a computer program in which the key-signature resolving algorithm was implemented. ‘The second piece of the set, ‘Painful Wrestling’, involves a left-hand figure which is a Bartokian perversion of an Alberti-bass figure, involving the persist- ent repetition in various transpositions of the pitches of a symmetrical struc- ture, termed a Z cell by Antokoletz, containing alternate minor seconds and perfect fourths (Ex. 2). This accompaniment supports an arching four-line melody with Dorian characteristics, though with chromatic inflections and a prominent opening tritone in the first and last sections. The temporal distribu tion of pes, particularly D, F and A, conforms loosely to that which might be expected to be found in D minor, the tonality nominated by the algorithm. ‘This confirmation of an impression which is reinforced aurally by the pres- Music Analysis, 17/i (1998) (© Blacwell Publahers Lad, 199828 DaviD cooPER Ex.2. Opening of the left-hand figuration of ‘Pai =| ful Wrestling” ence of the note Ds on the first and third beats of 50% of the bars in the piece, must not be misinterpreted. The claim is simply that the pc distribution, par- ticularly in terms of the total duration of tonic and dominant, is consistent with that which might be expected to appear in a work written in D minor, not that the work is ‘in’ D minor. For the listener, however, the more radical aspects of the work are tempered by a pitch structure which is comfortingly linked to tonal practice. Such pitch structures which ‘embody our tacit or implicit knowledge of the abstract musical structure of a culture or genre’ are described as ‘tonal hierarchies’ by Bharucha (1984) in distinction to ‘event hierarchies” which ‘describe the encoding of specific pieces of music’. Thus the Ds of Ex. 2.can be seen to form a component of an event hierarchy (the first event of a symmetrical four-note cell), which is integrated with a pre-formed abstract model of tonal organisation by the listener (the tonal hierarchy associated with D minor). This notion of a tonal hierarchy as an abstract structure is reminis- cent of Lévi-Strauss’s concept of a ‘first level of articulation’ found in music in the hierarchical structure of the scale, whose ‘division into fundamental, tonic, dominant and leading notes expresses relations that the polytonal and atonal systems complicate but do not destroy’.?” For Lévi-Strauss, ‘the composer's mission is to modify the discontinuity without challenging its principle’. ‘The fourth piece, ‘Sostenuto’, is apparently more harmonically complex. Ex. 3 provides an indication of the underlying harmonic progression, but does not take account of the surface detail. The overall shape is a three-part structure with a six-bar prelude and four-bar postlude. In the broadest terms, the three- part inner structure involves the setting up of an F major triad as a tonic, a progression through Cmaj’, Abmaj’ and Emaj’, to an ambiguous chord on Cf which coalesces C¥ minor and A minor triads, and a return to F.* In the opening section the quasi-dominant to tonic motion from C# minor to F, and the extensive use of chromatic neighbour notes, disturbs and defocuses the apparently simple progression, and in the central section the descending Ex. 3. Harmonic précis of ‘Sostenuto’ e (© Blackwell Publishers Ld. 1998 Music Analysis, 17Hi (1998)‘Te UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE Music OF BéLa BARTOK 29 Ex. 4, Bars 28-32 of ‘Sostenuto’ sequence by major thirds leading to the climactic superimposition of Cf minor and A minor triads in the left hand obscures the latent diatonicism. Bartok disrupts the ‘reprise’ by syncopating A/C dyads so that their effect is not so much the completion of F major triads on the first beat of each bar, as, by implication, of A minor/major triads on the second quaver (Ex. 4). The post- lude, rather against the expectations aroused by the opening and the inner three sections, cadences at first on an implied A minor chord (without a fifth) by way of an ascending whole-tone scale in the bass, and then, with a sharpen- ing of the third, ends on an A/CH dyad. ‘The ‘tonality’ of A minor assigned by the algorithm seems to affirm the mu- sical consistency of the final A minor/major resolution, which appears at first sight (but not, perhaps, at first hearing) to conflict with the F major triad which dominates the opening and closing inner sections. This tonicisation of A is undoubtedly largely contingent upon the repeated A/C dyads in the final thir- teen bars which retrospectively suggest that the accented Fs of bars 8, 10 and 11 are ‘suspensions’ to be resolved onto E in bars 15-16. The harmonic novelty of the movement should not be underrated, but it should be seen within the context of Barték’s youthful enthusiasm for Liszt and Strauss, and his experi- ences of an autochthonous Hungarian music. “Aurora’, the seventh piece of the set, isa tiny musical picture of sunrise, and falls into four closely-related sections. The piece cadences on a structure which is clearly a B major chord, with a diatonic seventh and ninth (Af and C#) in a high register. However, there is not a single unadulterated B or F# major triad in the piece. In the first two bars, an FWA8 dyad tolling bell-like in the tight hand is answered by C/E dyads in the left, forming a whole-tone chord which has the aural effect of a French sixth in E, a characteristically Bartokian tonal allusion. Its temporary ‘resolution’ in bar 3 onto a Bmaj’ chord is musi- cally satisfying both because of the latent diatonic implications, and, in retro- spect, because of the ‘logic’ of the voice leading (Ex. 5). The continuation, however, falls less easily into a conventional tonal reading, and certainly no progression to E is forthcoming, the next two pairs of bars progressing onto an ‘augmented chord on D with a major seventh (bar 5), and Df major/minor (bar nD. Music Analysis, 17/i (1998) (© Blackwell Publahers Ld. 199830 DAVID CooPER Ex. 5. The opening seven bars of ‘Aurora’ Overall, the harmonic orientation of the piece is ambiguous, despite occa- sional triads such as those of Dé major and Dé minor in bar 7, and the listener might well regard it as being effectively atonal for much of its course. The computer program adjudges the key centre to be B major, suggesting that the sense of resolution at the end of the piece is not fortuitous, but is due to the balanced distribution of ronal clues which, if one accepts this model of musical perception, are unconsciously assimilated according to a tonal hierarchy. In many ways ‘Finger-exercise’, the penultimate piece, is the most interest- ing of the set, and anticipates most directly Bartok’s mature style. It falls into two sections demarcated by the transfer of semiquaver motion from the right hand to the left at bar 27, and a concomitant reassignment of the melody fom the left hand to the right. The opening figure in bars 1-4 (Ex. 6) sets up a pattern of complementary rising and falling five-note whole-tone scale seg- ments at first on C, then on Dbg, which covers ten notes of the chromatic scale in a kind of wash. ‘The left-hand melody (Ex. 7) begins with the note Ag, and the pitch-class A achieves prominence both as an initiating and terminal event throughout the piece. Indeed it is heard in some 33% of the melodic line, the next most com- monly sounding pcs of the melody being C (22%), Dé (9%) and Ag (7%). An ‘examination of the distribution of semiquaver pcs in the accompaniment (Fig. 4) shows that they are not equally dispersed, but that pes D, E and F# are repeated most often, closely followed by C, Cf, F and G; the ‘tonic’ pe (A) ranks only eighth.* If Fig. 4 is compared with Fig. 5, which indicates durations for each pc for the whole piece, it will be noted that the total durations of pes other than A and C are approximately equal and at a very much lower level, almost appearing as background noise. This suggests a harmonic practice which is chromatic but skewed towards a particular tonal centre (in this case A minor). It is no sur- prise that the algorithm proposes A minor as the ‘tonic key’ of the movement. All the same, the preponderance of whole-tone material in this piece presents ‘one of the most severe tests of the algorithm to be found in the entire set. When considered in detail, the subtlety of Bartk’s tonal elusiveness becomes more (© Blache Publishers Ld. 1998 Music Analysis, 171i (1998)‘Tue UNFOLDING oF ToNALITY IN THE Music oF B&LA BARTOK 31 Ex. 6. The opening two-bar figure of ‘Finger-exercise’” Ex. 7. ‘Finger exercise’: first two melodic phrases = — Fig. 4. Pitch-class distribution of the semiquaver accompaniment of ‘Finger exercise’ (the y axis values are in numbers of semiquavers) Fig. 5. Pitch-class total-duration data for ‘Finger exercise’ (the y axis, indicates the total duration in crotchets) ‘Music Analysis, 17/i (1998) (© Blackwell Pubahers Lid. 199832 DAVID CooPER apparent. Bars 5-12 (Bx. 7) display a range of potential tonal centres, depend- ing upon the level of segmentation. Overall, the algorithm registers By minor as the main tonal centre for these eight bars, whereas on the level ofthe respective two-bar units it proposes Bb minor, Ab (G8) major, Bs minor and A major. Thus the basic progression between the first two bars, for instance, can be imagined asa kind of perversion of aVII-I motion in Bb minor. More tenuously, the As in the third bar can be reinterpreted as an upper neighbour of Gis which progresses to its dominant, Df. In the left hand of the subsequent two bars, the 5-3-3- in Bb minor is supported by sufficient tonal clues to reinforce the impression of a return to the first local tonic, whilst the final two bars of the phrase manifest the tonality of A through the simultaneous implication of an augmented triad on this note (A-C}-E#) and an augmented dominant chord of BS minor in first inversion (A-D-F). It must be stressed again that the purpose of this discussion is not to attempt to define or normalise Bart6k’s harmony in terms of simple diatonic progress- ions, but to suggest that the experience of it fora listener brought up within the tonal tradition involves a multiplicity of interpretations on different levels, which may relate to predetermined tonal hierarchies. Given the unproblematic ‘resolution’ of latent tonal centres in the other movements, it was disturbing to discover that, when presented with the intro- ductory movement ‘Dedication’, the program proposed B minor rather than the expected D major, especially since the opening gesture articulates an arpeggio of Dmaj’, and the closing chord is a triad of D major. It could be argued that this is a piece in which tonality has been virtually suspended, and that the use of such an algorithm thus becomes meaningless. However, a brief examination of Fig. 6 reveals a far-from-equal distribution of total pc durations, with very pronounced peaks for B and Ff. The one anomalous feature with regard to a B minor reading is the much longer total duration for F (Ep than E, which might be expected in a B Lydian context. Fig. 6. Pitch-class total-duration data for ‘Dedication’ (the y axis indicates the total duration in crotchets); note the considerably lower total duration of D and A than B and Ft PERE ogueees ( Blacvell Publhers 28,1998 Music Analysis, 171i (1998)‘Tue UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE MUSIC OF BELA BARTOK 33, The piece is in four main sections framed and separated by short passages at first in one voice, then in two-, three-, four- and five-voice chords; its effectis of ‘a conversation between a cool, ethereal upper register and an impassioned, imploring lower register. The piece is autobiographically connected with a relationship between Bartok and the violinist Stefi Geyer, which resulted in a number of works, including the First Violin Concerto, several of the Fourteen Bagatelles Op. 6, and the Two Portraits. In each case a motif formed from a minor or major triad with a major seventh is an important melodic feature.®! ‘The four melodic lines of ‘Dedication’ are illustrated in Ex. 8.The first line is accompanied by a G/B dyad in the bass, the second by Gés/Bs, and the third by GyBs, pitches which are thought to bear a cryptic reference to the initials of Bartok and Geyer.2? Whilst the tonality of the first line may be easily related to B minor (the combined pitches of melody and accompaniment give six of the seven notes of a B harmonic-minor scale), subsequent lines appear less open to Ex. 8. The four melodic lines of ‘Dedication’ rable Music Analysis, 171i (1998) (© Bachwel Publishers Ld, 199834 DAVID cooPER Ex. 9. The final three cadences of ‘Dedication’ (bars 33-5, 41-2 and 44-5) shown one octave below sounding pitch tonal interpretation. A reading which makes use of the concept of polymodal, chromaticism may reveal a more consistent basis for B to be regarded as the movement's tonic.>? The second line can possibly be seen as a superimposition of Lydian and Mixolydian modes,®* and the third of major and Phrygian modes and the whole-tone scale, in each case founded on B. The first six notes, of the last line can likewise be related to a whole-tone scale on B, and the other pitches, when respelled (except the Cs in the second bar), to Lydian or major modes. ‘The last four chords of the piece, which are shown in Ex. 9, form the final ‘two attempts to cadence the piece, the first abortive attempt being between bars 33 and 35 in a curious kind of interrupted cadence using notes derived from B major (Vf) and B Locrian or D Dorian modes, each voice moving by chromatic side-slip. The first chord of the penultimate cadence (B®) has both B and D interpretations (in each case it can be derived from heptatonia secunda),>> though the ‘resolution’ does not seem to have an immediate B reading, the pitches being taken from a five-note whole-tone segment (note Barték’s spelling of Bp rather than Ad). In fact, it feels like a dominant substi tute which could resolve onto a B major chord by further side-slip. The final cadence (BJ°*-D) is not of any conventional tonal genus, the last two chords melting into each other by chromatic movement (C}-D, F-F#). The sharing of the third chord by both D and B as a pivot thus provides for a smooth transi- tion to what is effectively a last-minute, and unexpected, modulation to the relative major. In retrospect, the computer program’s identification of the underlying tonal hierarchy as B minor does seem to have some justice, although the aural com- plexity of the movement should not be disregarded. Given Bartdk’s pitch nota- tion in the piece, itis unlikely that he was consciously working around B as a polymodal centre, for he surely would not have used so many flats, and in particular Eb and Bi, in its course. The piece was probably intended to sound alien, fragmentary and ‘difficult’. It is almost certainly articulates a musical narrative fully understood only by Barték (and perhaps Geyer), and it is also ambivalently both inside and outside the set of pieces, by sounding, as it may, the normally silent dedication. In conclusion, one must question the use and value of such an algorithm for (© Blackwell Publihers Lid. 1998 Music Analysis, 171i (1998)‘Tue UNFOLDING OF TONALITY IN THE Music OF B&LA BARTOK 35, the determination of tonality. It can be distressing to have one’s suspicions of latent tonal centres seemingly confirmed in atonal works ~ and there is an evident danger that music which is ‘difficult’ or demanding will appear to be tamed or normalised by the process. Although in itself the algorithm is funda- mentally musically ignorant, ‘knowing’ little about musical structure and noth- ing of aesthetics, itis able to simulate quite successfully one particular musical skill, that of determining local and global tonality. Indeed, it is because of its artlessness that it could form a useful tool in the analyst’s repertoire, by provid- ing a measure of tonality which is largely independent of ‘style dependent” knowledge. NOTES 1. George Perle, ‘Symmetrical Formations in the String Quartets of Béla Bartsk’, Music Review, 16 (November 1955), pp. 300-312; Tivelve-Tone Tonality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Serial Composition and Atonality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Elliott Antokoletz, The Music of Béla Bartok (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Paul Wilson, The Music of Béla Bariék (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 2. B. Suchoff (ed.), Béla Barték Essays (London: Faber, 1971), pp. 367-71. The word ‘folding’ is used by analogy with the culinary term. It is a term which also inter- ested the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze ~ see for instance The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. T. Conley (London: The Athlone Press, 1993). 3. Wilson, The Music of Béla Barték, p. 28. 4. The term ‘artefact’ has been adopted from the field of cell biology, where it indi- ‘cates apparent cellular features observed through the microscope which are actu- ally the result of the method of preparation rather than components of the tissue. ‘Two types of artefact are found: intrinsic ones which are distortions of cellular features (cell biology) or musical primitives (OMR), and extrinsic ones which are formed from extraneous matter caused by the reaction of fixative with other chemicals used for tissue preparation (cell biology), or ink blots and other imper- fections (OMR). See J. R. Baker, Cytological Technique (London: Chapman and Hall, 1966), p. 25, 5. ‘The data used for the experiments described in this article was taken from the anonymous ftp site atcs.ruu.. 6. Meta events are used in MIDI files to indicate such features as key- and time- signatures, lyrics and other markings. They accommodate events not transmitted in the MIDI data stream, 7. This refined algorithm makes use of the properties of tonal music determined by the algorithm described in this article, and the accidentals determined by the process of OMR to deduce the key signature. See D. Cooper, K. C. Ng and R. D. Boyle, ‘An Extension of the MIDI File Format: Expressive MIDI— expMIDP, in E. Selfridge-Field (ed.), Beyond MIDI: The Handbook of Musical Codes (Boston: Music Analysis, 17Hi (1998) (© Blackwell Publishers Ld, 199836 bavi cooPER MIT Press, 1997) for a discussions of the means by which notational data can be included within standard MIDI Files. 8, Duration information for individual MIDI events is held in one of two formats in a ‘MIDI file: as a number of ricks where each tick represents a particular division of a ‘crotchet (e.g. 384 in Steinberg Cubase 2 format), or in SMPTE time as fractions of a second, It should be noted that the numerical system employed in the MIDI coding of pitches does not discriminate between enharmonically-equivalent note- names: thus MIDI note-number 60 (C,) equally represents Bf, C and Dib. 9. As a refinement of the algorithm to deal with short melodic fragments, all pes whose rankings are less than three are considered as candidate tonics. This allows for cases where several candidates share the same ranking, a more common situa- tion when dealing with segmentation than when considering the tonality of the work as a whole 10. This presumes enharmonic equivalence to the extent that the pe which has an offset of 3 from the tonic represents the minor third, and that with offset 4 the ‘major third 11, Technical details of the algorithm are given in K. C. Ng, R. D. Boyle and D. Cooper, ‘Automatic Detection of Tonality using Note Distribution’, Journal of ‘New Music Research, 25liv (December 1996), pp. 369-81. 12, D. Butler, ‘On Pitch-Set Properties and Perceptual Attributes of the Minor ‘Mode’, in M. R. Jones and S, Holleran (eds.), Cognitive Bases of Musical Communi- cation (Washington: American Psychological Association, 1992), pp. 161-9. 13. Ibid.,p. 161. 14. C. L. Krumhansl, Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch, (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1990). 15, For convenience, pitches 0, 3 and 7 are described as tonic, mediant and dominant. Given that the experiments were aural ones, itis not possible to distinguish a flat ‘mediant (¢.g. Es) from a sharp supertonic (e.g. D#). In Krumbans!’s plots an in- crease in the y value of a data point indicates an increase in the subjective rating, the scale of possible values running from 1 (‘very bad’) to 7 (‘very good’). See Krumbansl, Cognitive Foundations, p. 21. 16. The graph of the Krumbansl average probe tone profile has been inverted so that it is in the same orientation as the average ranking of data described in the present article (ie. 0 is the most preferred value). See Krumbansl, Cognitive Foundations, P.30. 17, 1 am grateful to an anonymous reviewer of this article for suggesting this ap- proach. 18. Ie is also possible to compare the z-scores (standard scores) of each of the twelve possible tonics. The 2-score is computed by adding all diatonic sums, finding the average sum and standard deviation, and for each tonic, subtracting the mean. score from the diatonic sum and dividing by the standard deviation. In general the CT with the lowest 2-score (less than -1.0) will be the ‘true’ tonic. cel Publishers Lid. 1998 Music Analysis, 17 (1998)‘THE UNFOLDING oF TonaLiTY IN THE Mus cor BELA BARTOK 37 19. Butler, ‘On Pitch-Set Properties’ 20. Heptatonia secunda denotes the non-diatonic modal system found in some East- European folk musics, As an example, a form of the mode starting on C would include the pitches C-D-E-F#-G-A-BI-C. This version is also described as the ‘acoustic scale’ by some analysts, including Erné Lendvai. The pitches of this scale can also be compared with those of the ascending melodic minor scale (in the example above starting on G), or to a synthetic mode with a Lydian lower tetra- chord and a Mixolydian upper tetrachord. (It may also be noted that this mode hhas a substantial octatonic segment: E-F#-G-A-BI-C.) The pentatonic scale commonly found in the older Hungarian repertoires collected by Bartok generally hhas the interval structure of minor 3rd major 2nd ~ major 2nd —minor 3rd. 21. See M. Gillies, Notation and Tonal Structure in Bartsk’s Later Works (New York: Garland, 1989), 22. The graph shows a summing of the values of each pe for each scale form given @ ‘common final, where 1 indicates that a tone is present, and 0 that itis absent. As pe 0 is present as the fundamental tone of every mode, it takes the maximum. vvalue. This abstraction assumes that all modal forms are equally likely to occur. 23. Only the Ionian (major) and Lydian diatonic modes, and the fifth and seventh. modal versions of heptatonia secunda, have a semitone between their seventh and final (taking the version T-T-T-S-T-S-T (e.g. C-D-E-F#-G-A-B}-C) as the first) 24. Quantisation is a form of auto-correction to performance micro-timing that is built into sequencing programs. 25. The term ‘cell Z’ was actually first used by Leo Treitler in ‘Harmonic Procedure in the Fourth Quartet of Béla Bartok’, Journal of Music Theory, 3 (1959), pp. 292-8. 26. J.J. Bharucha, ‘Event Hierarchies, Tonal Hierarchies, and Assimilation: A Reply to Deutsch and Dowling’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113 (1984), pp. 421-5. 27. Lévi-Strauss, C., The Raw and the Cooked (London: Penguin, 1986), pp. 16-22. 28. In each case, the major seventh chords which appear in strong metric positions are preceded by three-note phrases, which, in combination with the dyads in the left hand, imply dominant-ninth chords. 29. Ranking begins from 0. 30. The third section is followed by a short passage containing a single four-note chord of C#7 (V of V of the putative tonic) and a figure in the left hand that echoes the last three pitches of the melody of the previous section, the final two notes being connected by a chromatic passing note (Cty-Dty-Es-F,), 31. ‘This figure, which Lendvai describes as hypermajor or hyperminor, depending on the modality of the underlying triad, was described as ‘your leitmotif” in a letter written to Geyer in September 1907. Jénos Demény (ed.), Béla Barték Letters (Condon: Faber, 1971), p. 87, Music Analysis, 17/i (1998) (© Blackwell Publishers Lid 199838 avin cooPER 32, This, of course, assumes a non-German spelling of the pitch B. 33. According to Benjamin Suchoff, All melody-sections, interludes and the postlude are polymodal collections, based on G, E and D as fundamental notes, which combine Phrygian and Lydian pentachords for the most part’ Suchoff, Fusion of ‘National Styles: Piano Literature, 1908-11", in M. Gillies (ed.), The Bartsk Com- ‘panion (London: Faber, 1993), pp. 124-45 (p. 127). 34. Apart from the Bf at the end of the second bar and the G on the second beat of, the third bar. 35, B-CE-D-{E]-F-{G}-A. Alternatively the pitches can be derived from a rising D ‘melodic minor scale. (© Blache Publihers Ld, 1998 Music Analysis, 171i (1998)