''For Ann (rising)'' is a piece of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
composed by American composer and music theorist
James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal ...
in 1969. The piece incorporates the
Shepard tone
A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the ''Shepard scale''. This cre ...
concept, named after Tenney's colleague at
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
, psychologist
Roger Shepard
Roger Newland Shepard (January 30, 1929 – May 30, 2022) was an American cognitive scientist and author of the "universal law of generalization" (1987). He was considered a father of research on spatial relations. He studied mental rotation, an ...
. The technique which the piece uses is more properly described as a continuous
Risset scale, or a Shepard-Risset
glissando
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...
.
It consists of a repeating sequence of
sine wave
A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or just sinusoid is a curve, mathematical curve defined in terms of the ''sine'' trigonometric function, of which it is the graph of a function, graph. It is a type of continuous wave and also a Smoothness, smooth p ...
s arranged in a glissando between twelve and fifteen rising at any time and
fading in and out, entering a
minor sixth
In Western classical music, a minor sixth is a musical interval encompassing six staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and is one of two commonly occurring sixths (the other one being the major sixth). It is qualified as ''mi ...
below their predecessors (; ). The concept of the piece derived from Tenney's speculations on
auditory illusion
Auditory illusions are false perceptions of a real sound or outside stimulus. These false perceptions are the equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or sounds that should not be p ...
s in his 1961 master's thesis ''Meta (+) Hodos'', an early application of
gestalt theory
Gestalt may refer to:
Psychology
* Gestalt psychology, a school of psychology
* Gestalt therapy, a form of psychotherapy
* Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test, an assessment of development disorders
* Gestalt Practice, a practice of self-exploration
...
and
cognitive science to music.
Variations
Imagining an inverted version of ''For Ann (rising)'', American composer
Philip Corner
Philip Lionel Corner (born April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist.
Biography
After The High School of Music & Ar ...
once remarked that the piece "must be optimistic! (Imagine the depressing effectiveness of it—he could never be so cruel—downward)..." .
Tenney suggested in later years that the piece could be "regenerated" with the distance between successive voices, the
minor sixth
In Western classical music, a minor sixth is a musical interval encompassing six staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and is one of two commonly occurring sixths (the other one being the major sixth). It is qualified as ''mi ...
(1.6 in
just intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals
Interval may refer to:
Mathematics and physics
* Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers
** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...
, 1.587 in
equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, wh ...
), being tuned to
golden ratio
In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0,
where the Greek letter phi ( ...
phi (1.618). He noted that this would aurally achieve a more illusory effect, because then all first-order difference tones between adjacent voices would be present in lower voices .
See also
*
Pitch circularity
Pitch circularity is a fixed series of tones that are perceived to ascend or descend endlessly in pitch. It's an example of an auditory illusion. Explanation
Pitch is often defined as extending along a one-dimensional continuum from high to l ...
Sources
*
*
*
* {{wikicite, ref={{harvid, Wannamaker, 2021, reference=Wannamaker, Robert. 2021.
''The Music of James Tenney, Volume 1: Contexts and Paradigms'' University of Illinois Press.
External links
''James Tenney: Selected Works 1961–1969'' at Artifact Records
Process music pieces
1969 compositions