Musical Forces and Melodic Patterns

number of recent papers and presentations suggest that "musical forces" play an important role in musical experience1. This article argues that musical forces are an embodied metaphor of the type described by Mark Johnson; that viewing them in this way allows us to use them to generate a well-defined set of three-, five-, and seven-note patterns; and that these patterns are privileged in tonal music. A comparison of that set with patterns discussed in published accounts of hidden repetition in tonal music, with patterns said to structure J. S. Bach's fugue expositions, and with Schenkerian backgrounds and first-level middlegrounds offers strong support for that claim.

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