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After hearing a tone, the human auditory system becomes more sensitive to similar tones than to other tones. Current auditory models explain this phenomenon by a simple bandpass attention filter. Here, we demonstrate that auditory attention involves multiple pass-bands around octave-related frequencies above and below the cued tone. Intriguingly, this “octave effect” not only occurs for physically presented tones, but even persists for the missing fundamental in complex tones, and for imagined tones. Our results suggest neural interactions combining octave-related frequencies, likely located in nonprimary cortical regions. We speculate that this connectivity scheme evolved from exposure to natural vibrations containing octave-related spectral peaks, e.g., as produced by vocal cords.

Consistency within otherwise changing musical parameters counters the notion of outdatedness and permits the theoretic-analytical discipline to transcend its relegation to history. The concept of the interval cycle appears to lie at the core of a consistent evolution toward a new kind of tonal system and a new means of harmonic progression. In nineteenth-century chromatic music, composers often employed symmetrical or cyclic-interval constructions as the basis for triadic root progression, e.g., by way of the intervals of the whole-tone or octatonic scales as well as minor-or major-third cycles. This tendency led in many twentieth-century compositions to pervasive use of cyclic-interval formations as the primary means of integrating both harmonic and melodic levels.

The traditional rules of voice-leading in Western music are explicated using experimentally established perceptual principles. Six core principles are shown to account for the majority of voice-leading rules given in historical and contemporary music theory tracts. These principles are treated in a manner akin to axioms in a formal system from which the traditional rules of voice-leading are derived. Nontraditional rules arising from the derivation are shown to predict formerly unnoticed aspects of voice-leading practice. In addition to the core perceptual principles, several auxiliary principles are described. These auxiliary principles are occasionally linked to voice-leading practice and may be regarded as compositional \"options\" that shape the music-making in perceptually unique ways. It is suggested that these auxiliary principles distinguish different types of part writing, such as polyphony, homophony, and close harmony. A theory is proposed to account for the aesthetic origin of voice-leading practices.

Much of Stravinsky’s music elaborates two structural fifths separated by some interval. Typically, one of those fifths is deployed harmonically (with various possible harmonic fillings) and the other is deployed melodically as a perfect fourth (with various possible melodic fillings). The harmony and voice leading of Stravinsky’s music thus often prolong a fundamentally bi-quintal structure. The analyses that appear in this article are drawn from a substantial Analytical Catalogue (available as an appendix to the online version of this issue of Music Theory Spectrum) that comprises ninety-five individual passages from forty-four different works—that is, from virtually every one of Stravinsky’s compositions from Petrushka (1911) to Agon (1957).

This Article Reports Two Experiments. In the first experiment, 13 professional singers performed a vocal exercise consisting of three ascending and descending melodic intervals: minor second, tritone, and perfect fifth. Seconds were sung more narrowly but fifths more widely in both directions, as compared to their equally tempered counterparts. In the second experiment, intonation accuracy in performances recorded from the first experiment was evaluated in a listening test. Tritones and fifths were more frequently classified as out of tune than seconds. Good correspondence was found between interval tuning and the listeners responses. The performers themselves evaluated their performance almost randomly in the immediate post-performance situation but acted comparably to the independent group after listening to their own recording. The data suggest that melodic intervals may be, on an average, 20 to 25 cents out of tune and still be estimated as correctly tuned by expert listeners.

What makes a musical interval consonant? Since the early Greeks, there have been two contrasting views: an \"objective\" approach, focusing on the mathematical relationship of frequencies, and a \"subjective\" approach, emphasizing auditory perception. These approaches are reviewed, as are several proposed measures of consonance. The author then presents a composition that uses intervals that are rated highly by the measures of consonance but are outside the scales of Western music and so are subjectively unfamiliar. The goal is to see whether, via repetition and other devices for overcoming unfamiliarity, the consonance of these intervals can be conveyed.

Fifty-one tonal and atonal classical melodies were evaluated by 29 students on 10 bipolar adjective scales that focused on emotional evaluation along four factors: valence, aesthetic judgment, activity, and potency. Significant predictors for each factor were obtained through ridge regression analyses. Predictors were quantified characteristics of each melody: the distribution of intervals according to interval size, the mode, and tonal strength (C. L. Krumhansl, 1990). Valence was best predicted by mode. Aesthetic judgment was predicted by the interval distribution and by tonal strength. Melodies judged pleasant contained more perfect fourths and minor sevenths and fewer augmented fourths; they were also high in tonal strength. Activity and potency were best predicted by the interval distribution. Activity, a sense of instability and motion, was conveyed by a greater occurrence of minor seconds, augmented fourths, and intervals larger than the octave. Potency, an expression of vigor and power, was marked by a greater occurrence of unisons and octaves. Thus the emotional expression of a melody appears to be related to the distributions of its interval categories, its mode, and its tonal strength.

The voice-leading rule of music theory that forbids consecutive perfect consonances of the same size between a pair of voices became firmly entrenched in the 14th century when counterpoint treatises began to replace those describing the older practices of organum and discant. A similar yet far more unusual rule discouraging consecutive imperfect consonances of the same size and quality appeared in the middle of the 16th century in the writings of a small group of music theorists that included two of the most significant of the period, Nicola Vicentino (1555) and Gioseffo Zarlino (1558). Others mentioning the rule about the same time include Jerome Cardan (c.1546) and Juan Bermudo (1555). Although Vicentino and Zarlino attempted to justify the new rule, their arguments appear strained and lack widespread substantiation in contemporaneous compositional practice. The present study examines their theoretical underpinnings for the rule, agrees with Karol Berger's suggestion that the rule was taught by composer Adrian Willaert, and supports this hypothesis through analysis of Willaert's madrigals. In Willaerts magnum opus, Musica nova, written by early in the 1540s yet not officially published until 1559, parallel imperfect consonances are not avoided in general, but the false relation produced by consecutive major 3rds over a whole-step in the bass sometimes is used for expressive purposes. The fact that Willaert follows the rule less closely in his earlier madrigals than in his mature ones also suggests that it may have been of his own devising rather than being something he himself was taught.

This study reviews how medieval music theorists write about the interval of the semitone and contests the notion advanced in a recent article by Elizabeth Eva Leach (\"Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone,\" Music Theory Spectrum 28 (1) [2006]: 1–21) that they collectively associated the semitone with femininity and considered it to carry connotations of lasciviousness. Examination of passages from a wide range of medieval and early Renaissance treatises indicates that a substantial majority of theorists describe the semitone in gender-neutral language. Nor does a contextually situated reading of the theorists bear out the impression promoted in \"Gendering the Semitone\" that within a central medieval music theoretical tradition the Greek chromatic genus, musica ficta, and progressions from imperfect to perfect consonance (\"directed progressions\") in fourteenth-century music were regarded as feminine in nature and erotically charged. A careful investigation of the claims made in the article \"Gendering the Semitone\" raises significant issues about how historians of music theory reconstruct collective theoretical attitudes from past epochs.