Possible and Impossible Melody: Some Formal Aspects of Contour
Larry Polansky, Richard S. Bassein · Journal of Music Theory · 1992
This paper explores some formal aspects of contour, especially mathematics of an abstract definition of contour itself. In hope of establishing a general formulation that will be of use to more specific, styleand genre-related theoretical work in contour, a non-stylistic approach is taken. Specific musical situations (like equivalence classes generated by elementary transformations, or musical assumptions made by ethnomusicological contour studies) are not invoked: Further generalization of theory of the number of possible contours includes formulation of a theory of contour for asymmetrical and non-ternary contour descriptions, one we believe to be of musical interest.