Metaphor and Methodological Foundations of Atonal Theory

The principles of atonal pitch organization are still in large part unknown. The reason why they are unknown is also unknown. The present paper addresses this methodological problem. The paper first examines roles of metaphor in the theory of tonal accentual patterns and examines the way we handle music-theoretical issues with metaphor. Metaphorical expressions are used to classify and designate musical entities in music theory. In addition, they determine the course of the development of a theory. Since näıve set theory cannot by itself perform classification of musical entities, it seems likely that an atonal theory which designates and classifies currently unknown musical entities in atonal music comes with a collection of new metaphorical terms. It seems that David Butler’s “Intervallic Rivalry Model” and associated metaphorical expressions coined by Richmond Browne and Jonathan Kramer are useful for a theory of atonal pitch organization.