Thesaurus of Abstract Musical Properties: A Theoretical and Compositional Resource

The discovery and application of abstract musical properties has had a prominent role in compositional and theoretical literature during the past 40 years. Abstract musical properties, most often associated with analytical or compositional systems, are presented in this text in an unbiased context that allows the reader freedom of association and interpretation. This book is intended to help verify musical intuition and has an practical application for composers and theorists curious about intervallic properties and transformational potentials of any pitch-class set. It provides supplemental material for coursework involving theory, analysis and stylistic awareness of compositional and analytical styles, and also for learning and confirming economical presentations characteristic of recent musical-theoretical literature. Organised in two parts, the first is a profile of all set-classes in charts allowing quick comparisons among them, including set-class reference tables, set-classes arranged by ascending interval-class vectors and a summary of transformational invariances. The second part focuses on individual set-classes, listing its contents, subsets and significant references to the collection in musical and theoretical literature. Internal segmentations of each set-class that are more structurally informative and memorisable than prime-forms are offered.