Dialectical Development of Music

In the relations between its various dimensions, music undergoes a dialectical development.   In his landmark book, New Images of Musical Sound, Robert Cogan gives the following quotation from N.S. Trubetzkoy (Principles of Phonology, p. 31):

   The concept of distinctiveness presupposes the concept of opposition.  One thing can be distinguished only from another thing:  it can be distinguished only insofar as it is contrasted with or opposed to something else, that is, insofar as a relationship of contrast or opposition exists between the two.  A phonic property can therefore only be distinctive in function insofar as it is opposed to another phonic property, that is insofar as it is a member of an opposition of sound.

One of the great founders of dialectical thought, Heraclitus, formulated several epigrams that (when applied to music) are very enlightening:

     * The cosmos speaks in patterns.

     * Expect the unexpected, or you won't find it.

     * Everything flows.

     * You can't step into the same river twice.

     * That which opposes produces a benefit.

     * A wonderful harmony is created when we join together the seemingly unconnected.

In New Images of Musical Sound (chapter 6), Robert Cogan provides a summary of various dialectical oppositions that exist within the various dimensions of music (and are revealed within spectrograms of music, as shown in the same book).  These oppositions are

     1.  Grave/acute  (opposition of high pitches vs. low pitches, also middle pitches come into play)

      2.  Centered/extreme  (oppostion between center and edges of a spectral range)

      3.  Narrow/wide  (opposition between narrow range of pitches versus wide range of pitches)

      4.  Compact/diffuse  (opposition between short time length and long time length of tones)

      5.  Non-spaced/spaced  (opposition between intervals of silence vs. lack of silences)

      6.  Sparse/rich  (opposition between few spectral elements vs. many spectral elements within a sonic context)

      7.  Soft/loud  (opposition between low level and high level of loudness of the sound)

      8.  Level/oblique  (opposition between level pitch vs. ascending or descending pitch)

      9.  Steady/wavering   (opposition between fixed pitch vs. vibrato)

    10.  No attack/attack  (opposition between audible attack sound to a pitch, often percussive, vs. non-audible attack)

    11.  Sustained/clipped  (opposition between gentle vs. rapid decay of a sonority)

    12.  Beatless/beating  (opposition between presence vs. absence of beating effect)

    13.  Slow beats/fast beats  (when beating is present, opposition between slow beating vs. fast beating)

In addition to these oppositions, we propose some additional ones:

    a.  Reverb./No reverb.   This is an opposition between the presence vs. absence of reverberation.  It is the time analogue of the beatless/beating opposition in frequencies.

     b.  More delayed/less delayed reverb.  When reverberation is present, this is an opposition between more vs. less delay in the reverberation.

     c.  Repetition-Structure/Transformation-Surprise    Opposition between repetition of time-frequency structures vs. their transformation sometimes 
          similar,  sometimes into complete opposition).  This is an example of the Multiresolution Principle:  Music often contains repetitions of time-frequency
          structures, or transformations of those structures, at multiple time-scales and at various positions in the time-frequency plane.  These structures are 
          often organized in a hierarchical pattern.  Here we see an example of Heraclitus' dictum that the cosmos [e.g. music] speaks in patterns.

Based on Heraclitus' epigrams that everything flows and that which opposes produces benefit, we see that these oppositions are not static and that they induce one another within the flow of musical sound.