Inmusic analysis, themacroharmony is what comprises the discretepitch classes within a given (structural)duration of time.[1]
There are slightly different definitions of macroharmony in the literature. In general, it may be said to determine pitch content within some duration of a musical composition.[2]Dmitri Tymoczko defined it as "the total collection of notes used over small stretches of time".[3] Neil Newton defined it as "the collection of pitches from which harmonies are sourced".[4] Ciro Scotto wrote that it is "a large harmony that subsumes the individualchords", adding that he used it more specifically to denotepitch-class subsets.[5] Julian Hook related it to the concept of afield of pitch classes, noting that the difference was one of terminology.[2]
Scotto suggested the term to Tymoczko, who introduced and defined it inA Geometry of Music (2011).[6] Tymoczko sought to discuss "music that is neither classically tonal nor completelyatonal" (seechromaticism andnonchord tones).[7] He observed that a macroharmony of between five and eight pitch classes, or a limited macroharmony, typically contributed to a sense oftonality.[8] He included this feature, limited macroharmony, as one among five general (universal) features of "virtually all" music. The others were conjunct melodic motion, acoustic consonance, harmonic consistency, and pitch centricity. He considered their (non-)interaction, relative importance, and mutual reinforcement.[9]
Of macroharmonies specifically, he asked:[10]
He proposed to show the rate at which pitch classes are used with "pitch-class circulation graphs" and the number and relative proportion of pitch classes on a large scale with "global macroharmonic profiles".[10]
In general, macroharmony may be understood in some relation to musicalscales.[11] Theoretically, the pitch-class content of tonal music may be that of thechromatic scale.[11] Practically, it is often limited to that ofmodes, especially the major or minordiatonic scales as subsets of the chromatic scale.[11][b] In a similar way, though scales may in fact constitute the entire pitch-class content of a giventuning system or the macroharmony of some portion of a composition, they are nonetheless defined as subsets of the macroharmony within the context of Tymoczko's project.[12]