Rhythmic partitioning of texture

Theory overview

By Pauxy Gentil-Nunes

Introduction

Note-based music presents itself as a superposition of elements, which can be lines (consisting of a single sound source) or blocks (where multiple sound sources work together). The number of elements, sources, and their relationships of collaboration or opposition are the main object of study of texture. Rhythmic partitioning is a technique for detecting these nuances and can say a lot about musical organization.

Rhythmic partitioning of texture is an expansion of the proposal of Wallace Berry, in his chapter "Texture". Berry proposes that texture is constituted by sound components that combine to form real components. Their relationships of independence and interdependence generate textural configurations that can be represented by stacked numbers. Gentil-Nunes applied the Theory of Integer Partitions, presented by George Andrews, to this proposal, generating an original field where the set of all configurations related to the instrumentation of the piece are related in a single system, called Partitional Analysis or Musical Theory of Partitions.

Partitiogram

A particiogram is a graph in Partitional Analysis that shows the partitions of a piece situated according to their agglomeration and dispersion indices. It thus provides an overall view of the textural field of a work. The variations of the particiogram provided by RP Scripts also allow visualizing the weight of each partition, through its duration measurement.

Indexogram

An indexogram is a graph in Partitional Analysis that shows the progression of agglomeration and dispersion indices over time. The outlined shapes provide an overall view of the textural dynamics of the piece, through the peaks and valleys of each index. The curves delimit areas called bubbles, which are units of texture articulation used to delimit the musical form.

This page contains the list of RPScripts/JSON files available in Zarlino for rhythmic partitioning analysis. Access Rhythmic Partitioning Assistant.

These files were generated by RP Scripts from digital scores available on the internet. The analysis of the rhythmic partitioning of the texture of part of these works is documented in publications available in Bibliography section .