IMPORTANT NOTICE: ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT CAN BE ANSWERED BY READING THE MANUAL WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN THIS FILE.
THE FIRST QUESTION
-I have other questions that are not included in this list, or I have comments or suggestions and even music pieces of mine (or by others) that I want to show. How could I contact the Author of NTA or other users, as it is not so frequent to find someone who is interested in these subjects?
My address is:
e-mail: ggrossk@tin.it
Giovanni Grosskopf
via Petrarca, 66
20099 Sesto San Giovanni (MI)
ITALY
phone: +(02)22479610 or +(0338)7699200
I will never give any address to anybody if I am not authorized to do so by the person who is directly concerned. After you have registered you can even ask me at any moment to destroy all the copies of your personal data and it will be done immediately, according to the Italian law. If you want this, however, I will not be able to notify any news about future NTA developments to you. On the contrary, you can also ask to be contacted by other users and to contact them, to exchange information and ideas about music, concert organization, working projects of analysis, new composition projects, new music you have composed or known of, and so on. I myself am very interested in news of this kind, provided they concern contemporary ╥classical╙ music. It is surely good to help the users to communicate to each other, if they want to do so: we are all musicians and we know it is always useful to contact each other, above all if we have common interests. When you contact me tell me if you are interested in communicating your address to other NTA users who have your same interests or work in your field, or to receive information about such possibilities.
-Will you please provide some bibliography about this subject?
Just a very few titles to begin with:
Direct References:
In English:
Paul Hindemith: The craft of musical composition, New York, Associated Music Publishers.
Reginald Smith Brindle: Musical Composition, Oxford University Press.
In Italian:
R.Smith Brindle: La composizione musicale, Ricordi.
D.De La Motte: Manuale di armonia (the last chapter, chiefly when dealing with Hindemith), La Nuova Italia, 1988.
A.Zanon: La composizione modale ed extra-tonale, ed.Carrara.
V.Persichetti: Armonia del 20í secolo, Guerini 1994.
G.Grosskopf: Manuale di NonTonal Analysis1.1, part 1a (NonTonalHarmony) (It can be purchased from the Author: see the ╥Version history╙ file).
In French:
O.Messiaen: Technique de mon langage musical, Paris 1944.
Indirect References (it is recommended to consult the bibliography listed in these books):
In English:
I.Bent, W.Drabkin: Analysis, Macmillan Publishers LTD, London
In Italian:
J.J.Nattiez: Il discorso musicale, Einaudi 1977-1987.
I.Bent: Analisi musicale, EDT 1990
However, I think that the best bibliography is always the analysis of music scores.
-When I see that, for instance, a chord has a D-index value of 11, what does that number exactly mean? Which is our standard measure unit? Is the number I see an absolute quantity?
There is not any standard unit. You can see that, dealing only with 3-notes and 2-notes chords, if you exclude tonality based chords, the perfect fourth is one of the closest intervals to the value of 1. It is a ╥neutral╙ interval, in the sense that it does not contain thirds nor sixths, that are dissonance reducing elements, and it does not contain semitones, tritones, sevenths and ninths, that are dissonance increasing elements.
It is really very important to understand that it does not exist any standard measure unit in this field. The D-index values are NOT to be intended as impersonal objective absolute physical quantities, but only an objectivization of partly concrete and partly subjective feelings, which allows to COMPARE two chords of any kind with each other. A practical help tool, a rationalization of your personal subjective feelings or needs. These values are therefore relative, that is they are meaningful only if considered in comparison with each other and only if that comparison is made according to the suggested methods.
-Which are the most or the less dissonant chords according to NTA?
To answer this question I must consider only 3-note chords analyzed with the proper preset values, otherwise the number of note combinations is too large. As you can see yourself, if you exclude tonality-based chords, the less dissonant 3-note chords seem to be F,A,G with the Color ╥Major╙, that therefore is the most consonant 3-notes atonal chord of all (considering both D-index and Color together), then comes the chord F,Ab,Eb with the Color ╥minor╙, that is the 3-notes atonal chord having the lowest D-index value of all (D-index=0), than comes the chord F,Bb,Eb with the Color ╥neutral╙. We can describe all this as an organized chord system with three central ╥tonic╙ chords (a Major one, a minor one and a neutral one) among which the most important one seems to be F,Bb,Eb. I consider this chord the center of my chord organization because it is at the same time the most consonant symmetrical chord and the most consonant ╥neutral╙ chord. The most dissonant chords of this system seem to be those belonging to the Family st/tr or tr/st, notably F,B-C and F,B,Bb and also F,B,F# and F-F#,C and F,B,E. Also F,E,F# and F,F#-G and also F,G,F# of the Family M2/st have a very significant position being probably the most dissonant chords among those that do not contain neither a tritone nor a conflict of thirds. The highly dissonant position of the chords of the family 3mM, on the contrary, can actually be very much questionable, because of the great presence of thirds in them. In this Family the most dissonant chords seem to be F-F#,D; F,E,C# and F,C#,D. If you feel that 3mM is not at all a strong dissonance, simply type a small number (or even 0) in its related fields in the Interval Calibration window or in the Calculation Methods window.
-Don╒t all these numerical values influence you to such an extent that you lose spontaneity and naturalness in your compositions?
Not at all. All the skilled musicians know very well that music needs to be structured and does not only come out of your instinctive, impulsive intuitions (and also not only out of your rationality, of course). Naturally NTA is not the only way to structure music. This question is usually asked by people who, even if they listen to music very often, are not composers, or by lazy composers╔ NTA contains several aspects that you can manage in a very natural and spontaneous way. By using NTA you will soon develop spontaneously a different way of considering things also when you are composing without using it. A short period of training is enough to realize if, for instance, a given chord belongs to the Family st/tr or to the Family m3/M2 - and it is very much useful to assign a chord to a Family, as all the chords that belong to the same Family have something in common in their sound. It is not difficult to classify approximately at once a given chord as having a low, middle or high D-index value, or to compare the different Colors of different chords, and so on, only with paper and pencil, without using the program. Besides, it is really very important to remember that NTA, of course, cannot warrant anything with regards to the quality of the final musical result (it would be detestably intrusive to think of such a program!). This means that you can use NTA very well and in a very technically correct way and compose an ugly nasty music piece all the same. The sensibility and the talent of each composer cannot be replaced: if they are not there, NTA can do nothing. It is only an unpretentious tool, and, as usual, it all depends on who is the person who uses a tool. You should avoid using it in an exclusive, exaggerated way: even with NTA you can always compose what you want, but perhaps with a better comprehension of what you are doing, and, afterall, you can at any time decide to leave it aside and go on without using it for a while.
-A given chord is classified as very much dissonant according to NTA, and it has a very high D-index value, but I like it.
Well, why not? It╒s not a fault! I really can╒t see the problem. NTA does not give any judgment about aesthetic values, it only points out the differences between different chords. I too agree on the fact that dissonances, when properly used, are often (almost always, in my opinion) much more fascinating than consonances. To avoid dissonances at any cost is certainly not a good way of producing good music.
-Why do the chords contained in ╥NTA SmallChords.DB╙ start with the note F, and not with C?
Because this database derives from manually compiled tables written on the standard music staff.
F was a very effortless lowermost note to start the chords with, without going too much out of the staff with the other notes.
Don╒t you feel that everything in NTA is very much personal and subjective (and so, according to many, not really significant)?
I have written this version of NTA, where the user can customize almost all the parameters, very much deliberately. This version of NTA is not to be intended as an impartial scientific work (that would be very much interesting, but would be quite a different thing), but is to be intended as a tool for the practical rendering, the objectivization of partly concrete and partly subjective feelings, an empirical help tool, a rationalization of your subjective feelings, needs and personal preferences, mediated - and this is the most important thing - by a classification procedure based on partly natural bases that are in part concrete and objective. I personally believe that a music, in order to communicate something, must always have some partly natural bases. Although I do not believe at all that the tonality-based music is the only one that has such bases, as we can easily realize listening to many ethnical traditional music of the world, and, moreover, I don╒t believe at all that the only possible natural basis of a music is the harmonic series (on which, by the way, much wonderful so-called ╥harmonic╙ or ╥spectral╙ contemporary music is also based, and it is not tonality-based music) or the prevalence of consonances. So I realized that, for atonal music, this ╥partly natural basis╙ could be an accurate and well calibrated graduation of the perceived dissonance (this not at all an idea of mine, of course), in order to conduce the listener through musical situations of increasing or decreasing tension, with clear, neat and well perceivable transitions from one chord or tone colour or passage to the following one, calibrated according to the personal sensibility of each composer. This is what I use NTA for, and I like it to be at the same time partly personal and subjective and partly impersonal and objective. I do not care at all about the spreading among composers of my own preset values, for instance, but I care about the diffusion of a proper awareness of these problems and of a proper method to cope with them.
-Why, while in contemporary music non-tempered intervals and audio spectra analysis are commonly used, NTA is still based on equal temperament?
A wonderful question. The tone colour of a sound is chiefly derived from the composition of its audio spectrum, that is from the reciprocal relationships of the intensity levels of the different harmonics or formants. Harmonics and formants are very well defined frequencies. So we can consider a tone colour as a chord, of course a non-tempered one, and on the other side any chord can be regarded as a tone colour. The absence of a defined border between chords and tone colour is fascinating, and it is one of the leading concepts in NTA. Now, even if contemporary instrumental technical improvements and electronic music allow accurately tuned non-tempered sounds, the great part of the most commonly used musical instruments work currently with equal temperament. Hence the need to gain an accurate control of the tone colour of - at least - tempered chords. I am a pianist, and all the NTA project started listening to the chords I was playing on the piano, an equal temperament instrument. But I do not underestimate at all the prevailing importance of non-tempered sounds. Some day I will perhaps succeed in implementing a more complex version, in which Calibration is obtained graphically by drawing the desired curves, suggestions based on psychoacoustics are displayed, intervals are expressed in cents rather than in semitones, and an FFT analyzer finds the spectra of audio signals and then converts audio spectra formant peak frequencies in cents, and so NTA finds the D-index of digital audio signals╔ Afterall, isn╒t a chord just a tone colour, and isn╒t a tone colour just like a chord? I am VERY MUCH interested to any similar work that has been already done, or to work together with any person who is already working on similar projects, especially if they concern also non-tempered sounds (that, by the way, I use very often as a composer especially in my electronic music works, regarding them as much more natural and spontaneous than the equally-tempered notes). Please contact me.
-Is NTA really intended to use atonal chords in a structural and functional way, relating harmony to phrasing and to melody, both in the small details of a few notes and in the overall form of a music piece?
Yes, sure, but only if the user wants so. In my own personal way of composing, this is what I want.
-Does not anybody think that, starting from Debussy onwards, the 20th Century harmony does no more have a structural and functional role?
This is an ambiguous and tricky statement! The 20th Century harmony, starting from Debussy onwards, does no more have a structural and functional role from the point of view of the traditional tonality-based musical system, but it certainly has it with regard to tone colour-based structures: in Debussy, for example, a chord is regarded as a tone colour, and the form of a piece can be based on a precise succession of particular tone colours in a preestablished order. NTA does nothing but developing such concepts.
-Why NTA has to do with atonality, but not with seriality, pre-composed rows of notes and dodecaphony?
Because NTA has nothing to do with seriality. Atonality does not mean only seriality and more or less free dodecaphony: I feel very happy when people realize this. My personal opinion is that many problems of the contemporary atonal music are not caused by atonality itself, but by the seriality-based way of composing in which a composer must build his basic note sequences in order to always avoid some harmonic relationships he does not like, thus obtaining a ╥grey╙ and monotonous (though coherent) harmonic uniformity. In this way the harmony does not help moment after moment to create tension or relaxation in the listener╒s mind, does not help to perceive the FORM of a composition. I feel something that is deeply unmusical in all this. Of course, your opinion may be different.
-In a music based on counterpoint, in which the horizontal, linear aspect prevails, is not harmony a secondary product, don╒t you find fascinating to let the chords form freely, at random, generating continuously changing harmonies?
I believe that in a well made music nothing should be a secondary product. Bach was a composer whose style was chiefly based on counterpoint, but he did not at all employ his harmonies at random. It is certainly very much fascinating to discover new chords by chance, but I believe that a music cannot exist without a form. Therefore, when you discover by chance a chord that is fascinating, the most correct thing to do, if you want to respect your discovery without ignoring its value, it is to ask yourself: ╥Why is it fascinating? Which is the best way or the best form to submit it to the listeners?╙ This way leads to research and deeper understanding, and both of them need a method. NTA can be one of the possible methods you can follow in your research.
-In a music based on counterpoint, in which the horizontal, linear aspect prevails, don╒t you feel it is enough to control which intervals can generate chords, through an accurate arrangement of the interval structures of the series or of the pre-composed note sequences from which we will pick out our selected passages when we compose our piece? If we make a distinction between melody and harmony (or harmonization), what will happen to the so-called ╥diagonal dimension╙ of music, that an important feature of a great part of the recent 20th Century music, according to which pre-composed note sequences can be arranged vertically (as chords), horizontally (as ╥melodies╙) or diagonally (in a ╥mixed╙ way) without any significant difference?
As I have already said, my personal opinion is that many problems of the contemporary atonal music are not caused by atonality itself, but by the seriality-based way of composing in which a composer must build his basic note sequences in order to avoid always some harmonic relationships he does not like, thus obtaining a ╥grey╙ and monotonous (though coherent) harmonic uniformity. In this way the harmony does not help moment after moment to create tension or relaxation in the listener╒s mind, does not help to perceive the FORM of a composition. I feel something that is deeply unmusical in all this. I personally have never been seriously convinced about the usefulness and the effectiveness of the so called ╥diagonal dimension╙ in music, provided you do not simply want to indicate with this term that a given melody may imply a given harmony or vice versa (but this is obvious and may also happen in Schubert). Of course, your opinion may be different.
-Don╒t you feel irritating and due to a preconceived partiality if not to a dissimulated intolerance this effort to estabilish a ╥standard common musical language╙ (with regard to atonal harmony, in this case) when, on the contrary, each composer has today his own methods and one should regard respectfully any of these existing methods? Why should THIS particular method be the best one? How could all this speaking about ╥the best method of all╙ make sense?
I do not feel it is irritating at all, on the contrary I believe it is an unavoidable task for any serious contemporary composer: to rebuild a common basis from which one could prize all the wonderful existing and past 20th Century ideas about musical composition and from which one could appreciate the great profound objective questions that arise when you deal seriously with music and also the enormous interest of the subjective personal ways of answering them. This should be the best way to ╥regard respectfully╙ anybody, the ╥best method of all╙. In my opinion one will always realize that there is something in common with the other composers only by exploring and openly showing the roots of his own identity, of his own way to cope with the unavoidable crucial questions in music, not by concealing his own opinions as ╥private strictly personal╙ matters that should only be ╥respected╙, that is, virtually, ignored. Music is not a private entertainment matter to me: it means to communicate to others your attitude as a human being with regard to the inexplainable fascinating beauty of sounds that we discover (and do not ╥create╙!). So, if it implies communication, to have a minimal common basis should be regarded as a very good thing.
NTA is not at all intended to be the best method of all, but, afterall, if I feel it is quite good why should I ignore it and why shouldn╒t I tell it to others? I am not going to conceal my own identity and I would never regard it as a correct thing to induce others to do it. I believe that this sort of cultural relativism can be very much harmful.
-Do you consider NTA the only intelligent way of composing nowadays?
Not at all! It is most obviously only one of the many existing ways, but, despite its many defects, I consider it a useful tool in many situations.
