Points of Discontinuity

The present project aims to create new ways of analyzing time-related processes in post-tonal instrumental and electronic music based on findings and research methods developed in the earlier FWF-projects A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-tonal Sound Organization [CTPSO] (201214) and Performing, Experiencing and Theorizing Augmented Listening [PETAL] (201720). In particular we will extend the concept of cadence from its standard use in the analysis of tonal music to post-tonal and sound-based musical works of the past hundred years. In addition to pitch-based harmonic processes, our concept of post-tonal cadence will preserve fundamental properties of tonal cadences such as instability/stability and motion/rest. Moreover, we will show how the perception of cadential moments might be conditioned by additional musical dimensions such as tempo, timbre, density, texture, and space. In a broader sense, such moments can be considered points of discontinuity in which endings and new beginnings meet. The relative salience (perceptual prominence) of these points is crucial for the formal design of a specific piece of music, resulting in different levels of segmentation of the musical flow into discrete phrases or sections. A meaningful categorization of these kinds of segmentation is the main objective of our project. As theoretical tools for categorizing cadential points, we will use the concepts of entropy (degree of order/disorder), convergence/divergence, and continuity/discontinuity. Our research is divided into three stages: (1) Points and degrees of segmentation will be identified in a broad repertoire of post-tonal instrumental and electronic works, based on perception-sensitive analytical methods as well as web-based experiments with external listeners. (2) Building on an evaluation of these research data, we will formulate hypotheses on how the organization and perception of cadential moments in post-tonal music might be categorized and described in a nuanced, context-sensitive manner. (3) Electronic sound sequences will be created as models representing these hypotheses. These models will be used in perceptual experiments with expert and non-expert listeners. The results of these experiments will serve to further refine our theoretical model of cadence and temporal organization in post-tonal music. Outcomes will be made accessible through a project website, a number of peer-reviewed articles in open access journals, as well as a public two-day conference at the end of the project involving external collaboration partners from Graz, Linz, Montreal, and Portland. The technological output of our research includes the development of a software for the segmentation of musical examples and the analysis of spatial structures that may find further use in the field of electronic music. All data assembled during our research will be made accessible in anonymized form through an open access github repository.

The research project Points of Discontinuity (PoD) examined temporal dimensions in listening strategies for post-tonal instrumental and electronic music, guided by a morphosyntactic approach to music perception and the hypothesis that a performative, creative listening is not dependent on formal musical training, even in the case of highly complex musical structures. The methodology was based on the findings of two earlier research projects (A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-tonal Sound Organization [CTPSO], 2012-14, and Augmented Listening: Performance, Listening Experience, and Theory Construction [PETAL], 2017-20), which were updated and summarized in a monograph during the project period (Christian Utz, Unerhörte Klänge: Zur performativen Analyse und Wahrnehmung posttonaler Musik und ihren historischen Voraussetzungen, Baden-Baden: Olms, 2023). In a large-scale online listening experiment, a total of 920 tasks were completed: 23 instrumental and electronic works or excerpts, composed between 1909 and 2010 in different styles and genres, were annotated by 40 different participants each, whereby musical segments were defined and weighted (degrees 1-3) and segmentation points were described using predefined descriptors and optional comments. The starting point for the evaluation were morphosyntactic model analyses by the research team, which served as hypotheses for the outcomes of the experiment. In a second, smaller-scale experiment, the impact of spectral entropy for the perception of closure in post-tonal contexts was explored. Flat formal hierarchies, caused by the systematic use of interruptions and silence or seemingly endless continuities and transformations, lead to increased ambivalence and diversity in the temporal orientation of the listeners. Experts show a stronger tendency to include macroformal dimensions, while non-experts seem to rely more on moment-to-moment tensions. In general, however, a far-reaching convergence of the results for experts and non-experts indicates highly individualized temporal conceptions when listening to post-tonal music, which demonstrates the strong relevance of a performative activity in concrete acts of listening. The research data were published in a Zenodo repository and interpreted in a series of peer-reviewed books, articles, and book chapters in open access.