BIBFRAME Work

Title

From scratch

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Writings in music theory

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  • Monograph
  • Text

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Supplementary content

Summary

One of the twentieth century's most important musical thinkers, James Tenney did pioneering work in multiple fields, including computer music, tuning theory, and algorithmic and computer-assisted composition. From Scratch is a collection of Tenney's hard-to-find writings arranged, edited, and revised by the self-described "composer/theorist." Selections focus on his fundamental concerns - "what the ear hears" - and include thoughts and ideas on perception and form, tuning systems and especially just intonation, information theory, theories of harmonic space, and stochastic (chance) procedures of composition.

Table of Contents

Introduction / Larry Polansky -- On the development of the structural potentialities of rhythm, dynamics, and timbre in the early nontonal music of Arnold Schoenberg (1959) -- Meta [does not equal] Hodos (1961) -- Computer music experiences, 1961-1964 (1964) -- On the physical correlates of timbre (1965) -- Excerpts from "An experimental investigation of timbre---the violin" (1966) -- Form in twentieth-century music (1969-70) -- META Meta [does not equal] Hodos (1975) -- The chronological development of Carl Ruggles's melodic style (1977) -- Hierarchical temporal gestalt perception in music: a metric space model (with Larry Polansky) (1978-80) -- Introduction to "Contributions toward a quantitative theory of harmony" (1979) -- The structure of harmonic series aggregates (1979) -- John Cage and the theory of harmony (1983) -- Reflections after Bridge (1984) -- Review of Music as heard by Thomas Clifton (1985) -- About Changes: sixty-four studies for six harps (1987) -- Darmstadt lecture (1990) -- The several dimensions of pitch (1993/2003) -- On "crystal growth" in harmonic space (1993/2003) -- About Dispason (1996) -- Appendix 1. Pre-Meta [does not equal] Hodos (1959) -- Appendix 2. On musical parameters (ca. 1960-1961) -- Appendix 3. Excerpt from A history of 'consonance' and 'dissonance' (1988).

Authorized Access Point

Tenney, James. From scratch

Government pub type

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11T20:12:55.629208+00:00
  • Agent: cbc
  • Status: c
  • Derived from: 18670799

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11
  • Cataloger id: Unknown
  • Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
  • Description language: eng
  • Description authentication: pcc

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