musicians of old

Chapter 890 The Unity of Theory?
"Crack."

From the moment Fanning wrote down this theoretical term, a more substantial, but also more inexplicable, change occurred.

There was a slight, discrepancy in the sound.

It's not any object in the historical scene, nor any "shadow," but the air itself that is everywhere!

In the front row, the same indistinct gentlemen, all of them, with their long, slender fingers formed by deeper shadows, slightly raised off their knees.

They seemed to be trying to make a "stop" or "leave" gesture.

A faint, almost imperceptible, fluctuation, carrying the scent of decay and decay, emanated from these figures, attempting to interfere with the "lecture" that was spiraling out of control.

But they failed!

The gentlemen's raised fingers hovered in mid-air for only half a second before, as if stuck in an invisible spiderweb, slowly and reluctantly falling back to their original positions. Not because they changed their minds, but because they couldn't leave!

why?
Why, why!?

This step-by-step progression
From Professor Fanning, who lectured the "students and teachers of Saint Lenia" and taught acoustics in the original historical projection, to the present day...
If "basic music theory" is knowledge that junior and senior high school students learn to get started, then "harmony," "counterpoint," and "form analysis" are at the professional level and are taught to undergraduate students in music academies.
The old industrial world valued inspiration over theory. In the past, when Fanning brought these theories from History 0 over and rearranged them according to his own understanding, they already had a slightly mystical feel to them.

"Schenker analysis" is a knowledge level that master's and doctoral students study.

The "Pitch Set Theory" and the "Generalized Interval and Transformation Theory" have already touched upon the most cutting-edge and unknown areas of brilliance in that once special 0th history!
At this point, according to the basic principles of mysticism, the form of knowledge begins to become somewhat indescribable.

"Transformation theory usually refers to the 'generalized intervals and transformations' theory first proposed by David Levine in the 1980s, and also includes the new Liman theory, which is often treated as a branch of this theory but is actually close to the 'carotid artery behind the veil'."

Fanning stood on the podium bathed in a ghastly green light; his voice, besides vibrating the air, seemed to be directly sculpting the structure of reality.

Those "things" discovered that the course content was no longer just text.

Instead, it includes light, emotions, smells, graphics, touch, and descriptions of processes such as dance forms, lightning paths, and volcanic eruptions!

"A generalized interval system! — Intervals should be elevated to an abstract measure of the relationship between any two elements! Projected onto pitch, rhythm, timbre, and terminology, revealing a cross-dimensional isomorphic logic!"

"Relationships come first! The meaning of music lies not in the composition of individual chords; isolated sounds are like rotting corpses, utterly meaningless! Only in the eternal dance of shifts, reflections, and retrogrades, in the mutual reference and betrayal between sounds, can truth be revealed!"

"The Law of Consistent Listening! — Whatever you listen to, you must follow the process! You must cultivate the bait of the embryo to trace how one individual feeds on another, and how a completely new form is conceived within it!"

“And the transformation network—” Fanning’s pupils contracted with the beat, “is the dynamic unity of the local and the global, the loom created by the primordial causality! It is the scorching trace left by intervals in space and time!”

Countless overlapping, translucent pitch planes appeared in the air, sliding and shifting to each other, producing a teeth-grinding friction sound.

The entire "lecture hall" seemed to be divided by an invisible mirror. The shadows saw their more distorted and essential forms in the mirror, accompanied by a cold, tactile sensation like touching a corpse!

Would you like to hear examples?

"The last Harvest Arts Festival, as you all know."

Fanning's leading questions were delivered in a low, dangerous tone.

"Pfft-"

Below the stage, a "student's" head suddenly split open like a ripe fruit, revealing several pieces hanging down around it!
The flesh inside was shriveled, with only a pale green aura constantly churning, trying to mimic the veins seen earlier. The shadow then collapsed, its limbs writhing, but it was still looking in Fanning's direction.

They clearly sensed the terror contained within these "Purema" that was enough to completely deconstruct them, yet they were stubbornly held in place by an instinctive, greedy thirst for "ultimate truth"!

A small upright piano had been placed on the left side of the podium, and Fanning quickly walked over to it.

“Stravansky, The Rite of Spring,” he announced the title.

His fingers began to strike the violin heavily and alternately, producing a strange and rapid passage. "In this final 'Sacrificial Dance' section, Stravinsky employed a layered approach to construct a 'transition network'! Different pitches and rhythms are stacked vertically, and when they repeat in their own cycles, he did not set integer multiples of periods! As a result, the beat is misaligned, and a fierce conflict arises between the fixed rhythm and the heterogeneous framework!"

Fanning moved from the piano to the blackboard, scribbling a white line of chalk across the newly emerging vocal parts.

"For example, here!"

"The brass's fixed melodic pattern, centered on E; the woodwind's blocking melody, centered on F; the dry friction of semitones, constitutes the juxtaposition of heterogeneous materials! But if we only analyze it traditionally from the perspective of 'semitone minor second intervals,' we cannot explain why the auditory experience is so violent! Only by starting with the concept of 'transition blocks' can we understand that it is the shearing, pasting, and collision between these complex sets of rhythm and pitch that brings us closer to the true description of the 'Primordial Devourer'!!"
Then, Fanning's tone suddenly became ethereal.

"What about Messiaen's 'Twenty Holy Infants Meditations'?"

"From the primitive altar to the sacred temple, Messiaen's 'limited transposition mode' and 'irreversible rhythm' are essentially a cyclical, closed set of generalized intervals!"

Fanning drew chalk on the newly presented musical example repeatedly, but the colors that came out were exactly the same and extremely peculiar!
Aquamarine crystals, small gray cubes, bluish-purple rocks tinged with coffee brown, specks of golden bird eyes, red cloth with pink diagonal stripes, star-shaped deep Prussian blue, and pale green with spiral cobalt blue.
“These are ‘Father themes,’ ‘stars and cross themes,’ harmonic prayer motifs, and birdsong chord motifs.”

"Traditional scales and chords, when transposed, require twelve semitones to return to their original position. However, when transposed, they return quickly and prematurely due to the local symmetry of interval cycles! For example, the 'interval vector' of the second mode returns to its origin after three cycles! Messiaen utilized this characteristic to create infinite truths within the finite wandering of music, thus realizing the impossible theological rainbow!!"

Fanning wiped away all the musical examples from the Harvest Arts Festival.

Then, the score for the third movement, written on the spot, rolled out again!

The recapitulation of the music begins!

"Now, let us re-examine your old friends, your portraits, my 'Ghost Scherzo', with fresh eyes!"

"Do you see those fragments of 'basic lines' that were once interpreted using Schenker analysis? They are no longer simple 'continuation' techniques, but rather the free deformation of linear interval patterns in a chromatic field!"

The French horn once again played a hunting horn-like motif, but was responded to by the eerie glissando of the strings. Screams, collisions, and twisted dance steps, along with various morbid and neurotic images in the darkness, once again invaded!

"Just now I pointed out to you the sources of those color chords, such as sets (4-18). Now, transformation theory can show how they shift, reflect, and even how their 'subsets' split and recombine to form new sounds in a movement, thereby driving the micro-evolution of local music!"

The light and dark relationships in the spectrum flicker in an extremely profound way.

In this piece, a seemingly ordinary descending second in the violin part may, through displacement or reflection, transform into a dramatic augmented fourth leap in the wind part at another point in the movement!
And then—

"Boom."

The movement ended with a barely audible pizzicato.

It seems that Fanning's theories have all been explained.

Almost simultaneously, as if on cue, he raised his hand, smiled coldly, and changed the chalk from vertical to horizontal, drawing a long rectangle below the newly cleared blackboard.

"To summarize, this belongs to our traditional theories: harmony, counterpoint, form, and orchestration."

Three horizontal lines were drawn above the rectangle, forming an equilateral triangle.

"These are the major theoretical 'pillars' of the 'post-tonality era' I just mentioned—" Fanning emphasized the word "pillars" and quickly wrote down the phrase, "namely, Schenker analysis, pitch set theory, and generalized interval and transformation theory!"

Does this shape look familiar?

"Since we've come this far, why don't I take the final step and give this 'ultimate answer' a name?"

Fan Ning suddenly smiled meaningfully.

The ultimate answer?
shape!?
triangle!?!?.
"Click!!" "Click!!!"

A sticky "click" sound suddenly rang out from the seats!

A small group of "gentlemanly" listeners, their figures blurry, seemed to suddenly wake up, then exerted all their strength and managed to "struggle" themselves to sit up from their seats!