Transformation (music)In music, a transformation consists of any operation or process that may apply to a musical variable (usually a set or tone row in twelve tone music, or a melody or chord progression in tonal music), or rhythm in composition, performance, or analysis. Transformations include multiplication, rotation, permutation (i.e. transposition, inversion, and retrograde), prolation (augmentation, diminution) and combinations thereof. Transformations may also be applied to simpler or more complex variables such as interval and spectrum or timbre.
Tone rowIn music, a tone row or note row (Reihe or Tonreihe), also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found. Tone rows are the basis of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and most types of serial music. Tone rows were widely used in 20th-century contemporary music, like Dmitri Shostakovich's use of twelve-tone rows, "without dodecaphonic transformations.
Anton WebernAnton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 1883 - 15 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (ˈantoːn ˈveːbɐn), was an Austrian composer and conductor. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and steadfast embrace and application of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques in an increasingly rigorous manner, somewhat after the Franco-Flemish School of his studies under Guido Adler.
Igor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with citizenship in France (from 1934) and the United States (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music. Stravinsky's father was an established bass opera singer, and Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied under him until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908.
Music theoryMusic theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music".