INTERVAL CLASS AND INTERVAL-CLASS VECTOR

Abstract

Although atonal music does not have any tonal center as found in tonal music, atonal composition still has unity under at least one form of relationship. The unity mentioned can be clarified by the correlation of pitch-class sets or sets with an interval-class vector. Vector is the total number of interval classes deriving from unordered pitch-class intervals. Talking about basic sound quality, vector is identical to triads (major, minor, augmented, and diminished) in tonal music. However, triads in tonal music have their own function in harmonic progression while the pitch-class set does not relate to any harmonic function. An interval-class vector representing the intervallic content of a collection of pitch classes will be written out as a series of 6-digit numbers.