Meter's Influence on Theoretical and Corpus-Derived Harmonic Grammars

I outline some properties of common-practice chord changes, showing that certain chords tend to accompany metrical accents while others appear on weak beats. More specifically, I will show that relatively large changes in pitch classes (here, "pcs") tend to accompany stronger accents, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Indiana theory review 2018-10, Vol.35 (1-2), p.93-116
Main Author: White, Christopher Wm
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition
Composers
Music theory
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Summary:I outline some properties of common-practice chord changes, showing that certain chords tend to accompany metrical accents while others appear on weak beats. More specifically, I will show that relatively large changes in pitch classes (here, "pcs") tend to accompany stronger accents, and that I, IV, and V triads tend to occur on relatively strong pulses. I build a model that generates chord progressions using these corpus-derived tendencies/preference rules, and I validate the resulting progressions against other models and corpora by correlating the resulting transition matrixes against one another. I conclude by suggesting that these results might yield insights into the relationship between harmony and meter, that these relationships might generalize across musical styles, and that these findings might interact with traditional theoretical models of chord "function."
ISSN:0271-8022
2474-7777
DOI:10.2979/inditheorevi.35.1-2.04