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COLLOQUIUM ON MATHEMATHICAL MUSIC THEORYH. Fripertinger, L. Reich (Eds.)Grazer Math. Ber., ISSN 1016–7692Bericht Nr. 347 (2005), 1-26
The Topos of Triads
Thomas Noll
∗
Abstract
The article studies the topos
Sets
T
of actions of an 8-element monoid
T
onsets. It is called the
triadic
topos as
T
is isomorphic to the monoid of affinetransformations of the twelve tone system
Z
12
, leaving a given major or minortriad invariant. The subobject classifier Ω of this topos and its Lawvere-Tierney-Topologies
j
are calculated. We explore the characteristic functions of the re-stricted
T
-action on triads as subobjects of the corresponding full affine
T
-actionon
Z
12
. The ’upgrade’ operations on such triad-actions which are induced by theLawvere-Tierney-Topologies relate the triads to actions on larger tone sets, suchas the modal mixture, hexatonic, and octatonic systems. Further we calculate theminimal
j
-dense chords for three interesting cases:
j
P
,
j
R
,
j
L
, which are relatedto Riemannian and Neo-Riemannian concepts.
1 Introduction
There are three “mathemusical” motivations for the present study, which we recapitulatein the subsections of this introduction. In the main part of this paper (section 2) we arefocussed on mathematical facts to which we offer music-theoretical interpretations anda music-analytical application in section 3. With respect to music-theoretical aspectswe also refer to [10], [11] as well as to ongoing investigations. Despite from its music-theoretical motivation the paper may also be studied as an exercise in basic topos theory.
1.1 Affine Self-perspectives of the Triad
Our investigation is motivated by the assumption that the homogeneous structure of the 12 tone system—as exemplified by the module
Z
12
and its affine transformations—isof music-theoretical relevance. The action of 24-element dihedral group of translationsand inversions on subsets of
Z
12
has been studied to great extend and more rarely alsothe action of the full 48-element automorphism group (i.e. including multiplication by
∗
The present investigation is based on my work within the interdisciplinary research group KIT-MaMuTh (1998-2003) which was financed by the Volkswagen-Stiftung.
Mathematics Subject Classification 2000:
Primary 05E20, Secondary 33C80.
Keywords and phrases:
Music Theory, Triads, Dissonance, Topoi, Lawvere-Tierney-Topologies.
2
Th. Noll
5 and 7). Non-invertible transformations (with multiplication by 0, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10)have seldom been interpreted in music-theoretical terms. However, Guerino Mazzola(c.f. [7]) observes that the major and minor triads are among the so called
circle chords
X
=
{
t,f
(
t
)
,f
(
f
(
t
))
,...
}
which are generated from a given tone (pitch class)
t
∈
Z
12
and an affine transformation
f
:
Z
12
→
Z
12
iteratively applied to it. With respect tousual circle-of-semitones encoding where
C
= 0
,C
= 1
,...,B
= 11 we can generate theset
{
C,E,G
}
=
{
0
,
4
,
7
}
by applying
f
(
t
) = 3
t
+ 7
mod
12 iteratively starting from 0 -and thereby algebraically simulating the “overtone”-derivation of this chord:0
→
7
→
4
→
7
→
4Inspired by this observation I tried to algebraically simulate other aspects of chordmorphology (see [9], [10]). The present investigations further develops selected aspectsof this approach. While focussing on the triads we recapitulate just very few basicdefinitions and facts. Throughout the paper we use the a circle-of-fifths encoding of the12 tones:note name “
C
” “
G
” “
D
” “
A
” “
E
” ... “
E
” “
B
” “
F
”
t
∈
Z
12
0 1 2 3 4 ... 9 10 11In order to denote affine transformations of
Z
12
we write
t
s
:
Z
12
→
Z
12
with
t
s
(
z
) :=
s
·
z
+
tmod
12
.
In the music theoretical context of the 12-tone system we call them
tone perspectives
.We denote the monoid of all 144 tone perspectives by
A
. The concatenation of toneperspectives
t
1
s
1
and
t
2
s
2
is given by the formula
t
1
s
1
◦
t
2
s
2
=
t
1
+
s
1
·
t
2
s
1
·
s
2
We study chords in terms of their
self-perspectives
, i.e.with each (non-empty) subset
X
⊆
Z
12
we associate a submonoid of
A
, namely
A
(
X
) =
{
h
∈
A
|
h
(
X
)
⊆
X
}
. Withrespect to circle-of-fifths notation the “C”-major-triad is represented by the set
X
=
{
0
,
1
,
4
}
. We get
A
(
X
) =
{
0
0
,
1
0
,
4
0
,
0
1
,
1
3
,
4
9
,
4
8
,
0
4
}
.
This concrete order of the 8 elements does not matter here, but is in accordance withthe multiplication table in 2.1.3. Isomorphic chords have conjugated monoids of self-perspectives:
A
(
γ
(
X
)) =
γ
·
A
(
X
)
·
γ
−
1
. Hence, it is useful to embed the study of severaltriads into the more flexible language of actions of an abstract monoid.
1.2 The Triad as a Concord of Consonances
Tone perspectives
t
s
are uniquely determined by the values
t
s
(0) =
t
and
t
s
(1) =
s
+
t
.The stretching factor
s
can be associated with the distance
s
= (
s
+
t
)
−
t
between thesetwo values. We may say that
t
s
turns a fifth (distance = 1) based in 0 into an interval
The Topos of Triads
3of size
s
based in
t
. Figure 1 visualizes this idea of extrapolating interval relations intotone perspectives. After choosing a fixed fifth interval we obtain a bijection between the144 intervals and the 144 tone perspectives with many interesting properties (c.f. [9],[8], [10]). Especially we may shift the consonance/dissonance-dichotomy from one levelof description to the other.Figure 1: Interval relations induce affine self-perspectives of the
C
-major triad
{
0
,
1
,
4
}
.We have
1
3(0) = 3
·
0 + 1 = 1 and
1
3(1) = 3
·
1 + 1 = 4, i.e. the tone perspective
1
3 isinduced by the relation between a fifth with base 0 and a major sixth with base 1 (leftgraph). Analogously, we have
4
8(0) = 8
·
0 + 4 = 4 and
4
8(1) = 8
·
1 + 4 = 0, i.e. thetone perspective
4
8 is induces by the relation between a fifth with base 0 and a minorsixth with base 4 (right graph).As a practical side effect of the interpretation of tone perspectives as extrapolatedinterval relations we use this association in order to load the ’nonpersonal’ repertoire of the 144 tone perspectives with intuitive names:Name FormulasPrime Perspectives
{
t
0
|
t
∈
Z
12
}
Fifth Perspectives (Transpositions)
{
t
1
|
t
∈
Z
12
}
Major Second Perspectives
{
t
2
|
t
∈
Z
12
}
... ...Minor Seventh Perspectives
{
t
10
|
t
∈
Z
12
}
Fourth Perspectives (Inversions)
{
t
11
|
t
∈
Z
12
}
We mention that there is a nice music-theoretical interpretation to the extrapolationidea. While Hugo Riemann (c.f. [12]) tends to consider triads as elementary and atomicbuilding stones of harmony, Carl Stumpf (c.f. [13]) disagrees with this viewpoint froma psychological point of view. According to Stumpf a triad is a
concord
of consonantintervals, i.e. a kind of wholeness beyond a mere collection of 9 intervals:
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