Talk:Neo-Riemannian theory

There is a factual error in this page: Douthett and Steinbach's Cube Dance is described as the geometric dual of the Tonnetz. That is not correct. Their "chicken-wire torus" is the geomteric dual of the Tonnetz.

The Cube Dance might be worth mentioning in connection with the Callender/Quinn/Tymoczko voice-leading spaces described just below there: it is a single semitone voice leading lattice--this sort of this is discussed extensively in Tymoczko *Geometry of Music* (2011) and his JMT article "Generalized *Tonnetze*" (2013).

--Jason Yust — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason Yust (talk • contribs) 02:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Adding Sources, etc

• This page certainly does seem to need sources. I study Neo-R theory and as far as I can tell, most of the info here is basically correct. I'm going to go through and add some small changes (including disambiguation of what the various operations stand for, like N is Nebenverwandt). I'll try as best I can to stick to wikipedian reference guidelines but sourcing materials can be tricky, so anyone else who watches this page who wants to help out (and maybe clean stuff up) I'd welcome.

~Frank

Changes I've made

Ok, I've made 3 big changes

1. Formatting: It's now organized into subsections on triadic transformations, graphical representations and extensions. The triadic transformations are also organized under nice little bullet points/
2. Sources: I've added a TON of sources, because there were none before! I've tried to be as consistent as possible with their formatting, though there may be some bumps (and I'm not sure it's the best way according to wikipedia standards to present them all). There are also a few sources I couldn't locate off the top of my head - the scale theory stuff mentioned in the end, which I know exists (it comes up in the recent Music Theory and Mathematics anthology, among other places I'm pretty sure).
3. Content: I've made a few content additions. This includes clarifying the applicability to repertoire in the beginning, and some of Cohn's more influential work re: the hex-cycles (which are precursors to the Cube Dance).

Places I think there's still room for improvement.

1. Graphics: It'd benefit this page immensely to have diagrams showing the canonical triadic motions, and explaing them as *inversions* rather than simple exchanges, which is a little confusing. Maybe a diagram of a simple example from the literature (Tarnhelm anyone?).
2. Analysis: Maybe reference to an analysis or two (Lewin Parsifal? Cohn Schubert Pno. Sonata? Those strike me as the most influential but that's just my opinion).
3. Critiques: The page makes it sound like NR-Theory is uncontroversial, but some strong critiques have come from theorists like Lerdahl. It may be good to at least make mention of these, and possibly cite literature (like Krumhansl) that works to establishing the cognitive viability of this theory.
4. Contributions from other people: The inactivity on this talk page suggests I'm the only one presently interested in updating this page, but I know I'm not the only Neo-Riemannian theorist out there! Let's keep this page going!

~Frank

--Falstaft (talk) 18:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

A somewhat big rewrite

Hi Frank!

Though I thought this article was an excellent first start, I found a number of places where I thought I could make some changes. I corrected a few inaccuracies ("Cube Dance" is not the dual of the Tonnetz; that's the Chicken Wire Torus) and added a number of new references. I also tried to add a slightly more neutral POV, which included a section on criticisms of NR theory.

More generally, though, I made two substantive clarifications. First, I emphasized the fact that NR theory is a dualist theory -- the idea is to classify triadic relationships by inversional equivalence. Thus LP sends C major to E major and C minor to Ab minor. Second, I emphasize that NR theory is a harmonic theory and not strictly a theory of voice leading. (This is discussed extensively in the two Tymoczko references I added to the article.) In fact, the example of F major, F minor, and C major shows that NR theory actually conflicts with voice-leading based theories.

This led me to try to distinguish NR-theory from more general theories of chromatic voice leading. I know that theorists such as Callender, Quinn, and Tymoczko don't consider themselves to be "NR-theorists," even though they are thinking about chromatic tonality and voice leading.

Anyhow, I don't usually like to make major changes like this without discussing them first, but once I got started it was hard to stop. Njarl (talk) 16:42, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Please discuss before changing

I woke up to find large changes to this article, some positive and some negative. Please discuss these on the talk page, it makes everything smoother! Njarl (talk) 14:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Dominant Function

Hiya,

I'm relatively new to Neo-Riemannian theory, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the main transformations dominant\inverse dominant? Should this be added, even if it's in the secondary transformations section? --SoUnDoLe (talk) 13:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC)