Eine Einführung in die Pitch Class Set Theory

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Subject according curriculum: Analysis, music theory seminar
Teachers: Prof. Sebastian Sprenger
Scope: Thursday 11:00 - 12:30 Start: 10. 4. 2025
Room: BP 201
Duration: 1.5 Semesterwochenstunden
Description: The seminar aims to introduce the basics of Pitch Class Set Theory, which was developed by Allen Forte, among others, in order to analyze tonal relationships in tonally unbound music, such as that of the Second Viennese School. Every combination of tones, from major triads to chromatic clusters, can be defined and described as a pitch class set with certain properties, i.e. internal intervallic relations. Thanks to this comprehensive character, pitch class set theory is now increasingly being used to analyze tonal or modal music, e.g. in contemporary jazz theory. But it can also be applied to rhythmic phenomena, so-called "beat class sets".
By means of exercises for analysis - with as broad a stylistic spectrum as possible - as well as for aural training, individual selected sets should be experienced as directly as possible in their "individual" characteristics as well as in their relationships to each other.
Literature: Forte, Allen: Harmonic relations: American popular harmonies (1925-1950) and their European kin. In:
Contemporary Music Review, 19:1 (2000), p. 5-36
https://doi.org/10.1080/07494460000640121
-,-: The harmonic organization of The Rite of Spring. New Haven/London 1978
Johnson, Timothy A.: Foundations of Diatonic Theory. Lanham/Toronto et al. 2008
Posen, Thomas William: Modeling Compositional Grammars in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957). (2016).
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/mus_etds/1
Schmalfeldt, Janet: Berg's Wozzeck. Harmonic Language and Dramatic Design. New Haven/London 1983
Terefenko, Dariusz: Jazz Theory from basic to advanced study. New York 2018
Wünsch, Christoph: Pitch Class Set Theory, in: Ders.: Satztechniken im 20. Jahrhundert, Kassel/Basel et al. 2009, p. 45-52
Credits: 3 Creditpoints
Comments: Course for BA and MA students of all disciplines.
Please register by stating your degree program at sebastian.sprenger[at]hfmt-hamburg.de by 7. 4. 2025.
Proof of performance: Participation in 85% of the courses; presentation (preferred) or written term paper.
Modules: Musiktheoretisches Modul 1 Instrumentalisten Master, Musiktheoretisches Modul 2 Kirchenmusik A (Master), Wahlmodul freie Wahl (alle Studiengänge)