Harmonic Preferences as a Style Feature of the Composer’s Poetics. A contribution to the characterisation of Miloslav Francisci’s adaptations of folk songs for piano Cover Image

Harmonické preferencie ako štýlový znak skladateľskej poetiky. Príspevok k charakteristike úprav ľudových piesní pre klavír Miloslava Francisciho
Harmonic Preferences as a Style Feature of the Composer’s Poetics. A contribution to the characterisation of Miloslav Francisci’s adaptations of folk songs for piano

Author(s): Eva Ferková
Subject(s): Cultural history, Music, Ethnohistory
Published by: Ústav hudobnej vedy Slovenskej akadémie vied
Keywords: harmonic preferences; style feature; chordal analysis; software instruments; songs; adaptation of folk songs; harmonisation;

Summary/Abstract: This article presents an application of software instruments for detection and quantification of the incidence of eleven chords of classical harmony in three groups of songs. The first two groups consist of selections from piano adaptations of Slovak folk songs by Miloslav Francisci entitled Trávnice I (Haymaking Songs I: a selection of 78 compositions from 100) and Trávnice II (Haymaking Songs II: a selection of 13 compositions from 100). The third is a group of 38 original songs by Ján Levoslav Bella, which we acquired already in digital form in MIDI format. The software instruments are described in the article, and in the tables of results of computer analysis of the three groups we present findings on the percentage incidence of the individual chords in each song individually. This result may be regarded as new information about the harmonic preferences of the composers, in terms of the selection of chords for harmonisation and musical creation. Between Francisci and Bella there is an obvious difference in preference: Bella worked with a greater variety of types of chords, and in this regard his compositional style is more complex and expressively more multiform.

  • Issue Year: 8/2017
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 169-187
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Slovak