The 1957 ''Encyclopédie Larousse''quoted in

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques Jean-Jacques Nattiez (; born December 30, 1945 in Amiens, France) is a musical semiologist or semiotician and professor of musicology at the Université de Montréal. He studied semiology with Georges Mounin and Jean Molino and music semiology ...

(1990). ''Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music'' (''Musicologie générale et sémiologue'', 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). . defines a cell in

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

as a "small

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...

ic and

melodic A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinat ...

design that can be isolated, or can make up one part of a thematic context". The cell may be distinguished from the figure or motif: the 1958 ''Encyclopédie Fasquelle'' defines a cell as "the smallest indivisible unit", unlike the motif, which may be divisible into more than one cell. "A cell can be developed, independent of its context, as a melodic fragment, it can be used as a developmental motif. It can be the source for the whole

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such a ...

of the work; in that case it is called a generative cell." A rhythmic cell is a cell without melodic connotations. It may be entirely percussive or applied to different melodic segments.

History

The term "cell" (German: ''Keim'') derives from organic music theorists of the nineteenth century.

Arnold Schering Arnold Schering (2 April 1877 in Breslau, German Empire – 7 March 1941 in Berlin) was a German musicologist. He grew up in Dresden as the son of an art publisher. He learned violin at the from which he graduated in 1896. Thereafter he studied ...

adopted the term, along with "melodic kernels" (''Melodiekerne'') in his analysis of 14th-century

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...

, one of the first uses of

Gestalt psychology Gestalt-psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology that emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a theory of perception that was a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward ...

in music theory.

References

{{Musical form Formal sections in music analysis

History

See also

References