Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies

Author(s): Fred Lerdahl

Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1 (September 2015), pp.
83-95
Published by: University of California Press
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 Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies 83

CONCEPTS AND R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S OF MUSICAL HIERARCHIES

F R E D L E R DA H L notation because it is efficient and leaves space above

Columbia University the music for other kinds of structural representation.
A second kind of musical hierarchy is metrical struc-
THIS PAPER UNDERTAKES A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ture, which represents periodic patterns of strong and
concepts and visual representations of hierarchical weak beats. The sense in which meter is hierarchical has
aspects of musical structure. After consideration of the not always been made clear, in part because attributes of
rhythmic components of grouping and meter, the dis- meter historically have been combined with those of
cussion turns to pitch-event hierarchies and the tonal grouping structure, leading to confusion about its essen-
hierarchy (or pitch space). Contrasting notations are tial characteristics (for discussion, see GTTM, pp.
evaluated in terms of the efficacy of the concepts they 17-34). Moreover, representations of metrical structure
exemplify. are often inadequate. The hierarchy of 4/4 meter is
sometimes represented as in Figure 2a, in which capital
Received: November 6, 2014, accepted May 4, 2015. ‘‘S’’ signifies that beat 1 is the strongest, small ‘‘s’’ that
beat 3 is of intermediate weight, and ‘‘w’’ that beats 2 an
Key words: hierarchical representation, grouping,
4 are weak. These symbols imply a hierarchy but do not
meter, prolongational structure, pitch space
reveal it. The same holds for the notation in Figure 2b,
borrowed from the ancient tradition of poetic foot
analysis.

M
USIC THEORISTS REGARD IMPORTANT Longuet-Higgins (1978/1987), in an adaptation of
aspects of musical structure as hierarchical. tree structures from generative linguistics, proposes
For example, they discuss musical form a metrical tree notation that can be recast as Figure
in terms of groupings of events at successive levels: 2c, in which objects with longer branches dominate
motives take place within phrases, phrases within those with shorter branches. Thus beat 1 is superordi-
phrase groupings, and phrase groupings within sec- nate, beat 3 connects to beat 1 at the next level down,
tions. Ray Jackendoff’s and my book A Generative The- and beats 2 and 4 connect at the smallest level to beats 1
ory of Tonal Music (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983; and 3, respectively. This notation stipulates a depen-
hereafter GTTM) generalizes this kind of hierarchical dency hierarchy—that is, the explicit connection of sub-
structure in its grouping component. It represents ordinate objects to superordinate objects. A dependency
groups, regardless of level, by nested brackets as in hierarchy is to be distinguished from a non-dependency
Figure 1a. A given event belongs in one group or hierarchy such as that in Figure 1, in which subordinate
another, and a group at a smaller level is contained elements (two subgroups in this case) belong within
within a group at the next larger level. It is also possible the larger element (a group) without domination-
to represent the larger-level group by a tree notation subordination branching.
in which neither subgroup dominates the other, as in In Figure 2c, weak beats belong as afterbeats to pre-
Figure 1b. This notation resembles the parsing trees ceding strong beats. But music also has upbeats, in
discussed in Bod (2002). GTTM employs the bracket which case a weak beat groups with the following strong
beat. Figure 2d shows how a metrical tree represents
beat 4 as an upbeat, assuming a grouping boundary
between beats 3 and 4. While it is possible to adjust
metrical trees in this way according to grouping context,
GTTM opts for the grid notation in Figure 2e, in which
dots represent beats that are equidistant from one beat
to the next at any given level (this requirement can be
relaxed within limits). If a beat is heard as strong at one
level, it is also a beat at the next larger level. The grid can
FIGURE 1. Representation of musical groups. be changed to a wave notation, shown in Figure 2f, that

Music Perception, VO LU ME 33, I S SUE 1, PP. 83–95, IS S N 0730-7829, EL ECT RON IC ISSN 1533-8312. © 2015 BY T HE R EGEN TS OF T HE U NIV E R S IT Y OF CA LI FOR NIA A LL
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R IG H TS A N D P E RM I S S IO N S W E B S IT E , HT T P :// W W W. UC PRESSJ OUR NALS . COM / REPR INT INF O . A S P. DOI: 10.1525/ M P.2015.33.1.83

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84 Fred Lerdahl

FIGURE 2. Contrasting notations for 4/4 meter.

Zuckerkandl (1956) employs to bring out the in-phase

periodic nature of metrical structure. This notation
bears some resemblance to the attentional waves devel-
oped in Large and Jones (1999) and Large and Palmer
(2002). It is telling, however, that Zuckerkandl refers to
musical examples that do not have upbeats. A grouping
boundary between beats 3 and 4, for example, would
presumably interfere with the metrical wave between
beat 3 and ensuing beat 1.
The grid representation circumvents the dependency
problem. Meter, although hierarchical, does not in itself
entail dependency; that is, a weak beat does not intrin-
sically belong to its preceding or succeeding strong beat.
Rather, dependency emerges through the interaction of
meter with grouping structure.1
London (2012, pp. 77-87), after providing a compara-
ble summary of metrical notations, proposes circular
representations such as Figure 3, which illustrates 4/4
meter. Time goes clockwise around the circle. Beat 1 is
arbitrarily assigned to the top, or north, node. Beat 2 is
on the east node, beat 3 on the south node, and beat 4 on
the west node. The ellipse in the center shows the oscil-
lation between beats 1 and 3, so that beat 3 is stronger
than beats 2 and 4. This notation can be seen as a rolled-
up version of the wave notation in Figure 2f.
Although London (2012) is able to illustrate many
metrical features employing circular diagrams, there are
1
For details of this interaction, see GTTM, pp. 124-128 and 146-151.
Similar arguments in generative phonology have caused the stress trees
(confusingly called ‘‘metrical trees’’) of Liberman and Prince (1977) often
to be replaced by the grid notation of Selkirk (1984) and Hayes (1989).
GTTM, pp. 314-330, addresses parallels with Liberman and Prince. Ler-
dahl (2001a, 2013) discusses the relationship between prosodic and musi-
cal grids.
FIGURE 3. London’s circular representation of 4/4 meter (redrawn with
permission).
several disadvantages to his choice of representation.
First, the superordinate strength of beat 1 is not shown
but taken by convention. Second, the circle restricts
time’s flow to one cycle and thus does not show repeat-
ing cycles, even though these are essential to any
account of meter. Third, and as a consequence, the circle
notation cannot coordinate visually with a musical pas-
sage in standard musical notation, which assumes time’s
arrow from left to right. Fourth, diagrams of more com-
plex metrical structures become difficult to read. As far
as I can tell, there is not any metrical feature that Lon-
don discusses that cannot also be represented by the
simpler and more transparent grid notation.
The contrasting representations in Figures 2 and 3
demonstrate that a choice of notation not only illus-
trates a structure but also entails theoretical claims
about it. This theme continues as the discussion turns
to pitch hierarchies.
A pitch-event hierarchy treats a sequence of pitch events
(pitches or chords) in a hierarchical manner. As a result,
many connections project long-range dependencies to

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preceding or succeeding non-adjacent events. Current
theories of event hierarchies include GTTM’s time-span
and prolongational components and Rohrmeier’s
(2011) Generative Syntax Model. The view of pitch
events as hierarchically related is implicit in many
historical treatises, for instance in the treatment of
cadences as structurally important (e.g., Koch, 1793/
1983; Rameau, 1722/1971). At the heart of Fux’s
(1725/1965) pedagogy is the hierarchical elaboration
of melodic lines from first to fifth species. C. P. E. Bach’s
(1753-1762/1949) treatise on keyboard playing enlarges
the concept of hierarchical embellishment. 20th century
studies of musical form, such as Tovey (1935), Rosen
(1972), and Caplin (1998), inevitably refer to initiating
tonics, modulation to subordinate keys, and tonic
returns. Schenker (1935/2001) extends the idea of elab-
oration into a comprehensive system that represents
event hierarchies from the smallest details to the most
global connections.
One of Schenker’s achievements is to represent event
hierarchies not by verbal description or extrinsic sym-
bols but by musical notation. To read a Schenkerian
analysis is to read a version of the music itself, giving
the analysis a tangibility that most music theories do not
convey. But Schenkerian notation is often imprecise in
its hierarchical claims. Take Figure 4a, a reproduction of
the first figure in Schenker (1935/2001): an Ursatz (fun-
damental structure) with a 3̂ - 2̂ - 1̂ Urlinie (fundamen-
tal line), presented as an organic unit without further
FIGURE 4. Contrasting notations for pitch-event hierarchies.
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Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies 85
decomposition. Within the theory as a whole, however,
the hierarchy of the Ursatz is understood as a prolonged
tonic chord elaborated by the dominant, with the first
scale degree as the resolution of the melodic descent.
Schenkerian notation represents these relationships by
analytic levels, as in Figure 4b, or by durational values to
signify relative structural importance and slurs (or
beams) to connect events, as in Figure 4c. Both repre-
sentations assign the dominant chord a subordinate
position without specifying subordination to either
tonic.
GTTM, in contrast, employs a tree notation that
entails dependency of a subordinate event to a specific
superordinate event. Figures 4d-e show the same rela-
tionships as Figures 4b-c but with the further stipulation
that the dominant belongs to either the first tonic (4d)
or the second (4e). Slurs and durational values can rep-
resent these same relationships, so that Figure 4f corre-
sponds to 4d and 4g to 4e. Finally, the tree and slur
notations can be combined redundantly as in Figure
4h. The tree notation ensures hierarchical dependency
at all levels.
Beyond its representation of hierarchy, the tree nota-
tion expresses patterns of tension and relaxation. As
shown in Figure 5, a right branch signifies a tensing
motion and a left branch a relaxing motion. These ten-
sion patterns nest from level to level of the tree. From
a temporal perspective, right branching relates a subor-
dinate event to a preceding more stable event and
86 Fred Lerdahl
FIGURE 5. Branching as a representation of tensing and relaxing
motions.
indicates retrospective hearing; left branching connects
a subordinate event to a following more stable event and
indicates prospective hearing.
GTTM’s tree notation has been criticized on several
grounds. First, it is unfamiliar and apparently difficult
to use. I take this criticism seriously. After three decades,
few musicians employ musical trees comfortably in
complex analyses. For this reason, I often duplicate the
tree with the slur notation as in Figure 4h. This dupli-
cation does not, however, ease the complexities of the
derivation of pitch-event hierarchies.
A second objection is that the tree notation presents
too unitary a view of musical progression, neglecting
differences in how individual voices move. The notation
reflects one of GTTM’s methodological idealizations,
the simplification of a musical surface into a single
stream of events. This objection lacks force, for in tonal
music polyphonic strands reconcile in the harmonic
flow underpinning them. In my book Tonal Pitch Space
(Lerdahl, 2001b, pp. 32-34; hereafter TPS), I outline
how strands collapse into a single stream at reductional
levels not far beneath the musical surface. This treat-
ment is compatible with Schenkerian practice, in which
the stable end points of a linear progression are made
vertical at underlying levels. The slur notation suffices
to represent hierarchical divergences of streams at or
near the surface, reserving the tree notation for inter-
mediate and global levels of prolongational analysis.
A third criticism of the tree notation is consequential:
some events may be directly subordinate to other
events, such as a suspension to its resolution or V to I
in a cadence, but other events ought to be represented as
subordinate without dependency, such as passing and
neighboring pitches or chords. This argument is remi-
niscent of the discussion about metrical grids and trees.
If grids suffice for meter, why not advance a non-
dependency hierarchy for aspects of pitch-event
hierarchies?
The GTTM/TPS theory addresses this objection in
two ways. In its time-span reduction, the associated
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time-span segmentation, reflecting the interaction of
meter and grouping, determines right or left branching
at any given level. In its prolongational component,
which corresponds more closely to Schenkerian reduc-
tion, a subordinate event attaches to the more stable
event in its prolongational context according to criteria
of pitch and rhythmic stability. Thus if event e2 is sub-
ordinate in the context of e1 and e3, it attaches to e1 if
e1 is more stable than e3 or, conversely, to e3 if e3 is
more stable than e1. Sometimes, however, as in passing
and neighboring events, a branching decision can be
strained. The thought lingers that not all events should
be required to branch.
The prolongational component could indeed be
enriched so that some hierarchical relationships involve
dependency and others do not. This step would com-
plicate the prolongational component and require cri-
teria for determining which subordinate events attach as
branches and which do not. TPS takes an option that
causes minimal disruption to the claims behind the tree
notation: in certain contexts it assigns to a subordinate
event a second connection, represented by a dashed
branch. In Figure 6a, the passing tone D not only
attaches to C, the most stable pitch, but also to the
relatively stable pitch E. The short slur from D to C can
be suppressed, creating a representation comparable to
Figure 4c. In the harmonic progression in Figure 6b,
a right branch at vi changes to a left branch at ii6. The
dashed branch connects vi and ii6 so that ii6 attaches in
both directions. Furthermore—to anticipate the discus-
sion—once pitch-space distances are calculated down
the tree as part of a tension analysis, there is a principled
reason to assign a solid branch to ii6!V and a dashed
branch to vi!ii6. Central to TPS is the principle of the
shortest path, which favors the smallest distance in cal-
culating a relationship between events (as, for example,
the distance from New York to Chicago is understood
by going west rather than east around the globe). This
principle is analogous to the principle of least action in
physics and the principle of Prägnanz in Gestalt psy-
chology; it takes the simplest, most efficient solution.
The numbers in the tree in Figure 6b are distance units,
and the tension curve of the progression is computed
in part by summing distances down the tree (TPS,
pp. 142-159; Lerdahl & Krumhansl, 2007). As shown at
the bottom of the figure, the overall distance to ii6 is
shorter by the branch to Vthan by the branch to vi. Hence
ii6!V receives a solid and vi!ii6 a dashed branch.
A fourth criticism of the tree representation is that it
is unrealistic to assign a complete tree to all the events in
a piece. This objection applies equally to Schenkerian
theory and is not really about the tree notation. GTTM’s

FIGURE 6. Double branching in prolongational analysis.
reduction hypothesis states: ‘‘The listener attempts to
organize all the pitch events of a piece into a single
coherent structure, such that they are heard in a hierar-
chy of relative importance’’ (p. 106, italics added). There
is no claim that the listener actually infers such a com-
prehensive organization. The extent to which listeners
hear music hierarchically varies among individuals, in
the same person on different hearings, and in the same
person’s hearing of different parts of a single piece
depending on the complexity of a particular passage.
The reduction hypothesis does not constitute a grand
claim about perception beyond the listener’s proclivity
to hear hierarchically. Instead it instantiates one of
GTTM’s methodological strategies: the theory seeks to
describe an idealized final state of understanding rather
than how music is processed in real time. GTTM
regards musical processing as an important issue best
approached with the concepts and representations of
a final-state theory in hand. (See Jackendoff, 1991, for
an exploration of how GTTM can be adapted to real-
time processing.)
This issue is exacerbated by experimental difficulties
in accessing listeners’ intuitions of hierarchy. Attempts
to find evidence of the perception of long-distance tonic
closure have yielded weak results concerning global
tonic prolongation (Cook, 1987; Marvin & Brinkman,
1999). It is a mistake, however, to conflate hearing clo-
sure, which involves many musical factors, with recog-
nizing distant events as being in the same key. Indeed, it
is not hard to find or construct musical passages that
achieve closure without tonic prolongation. TPS (pp.
227-229) sketches a method for representing prolonga-
tions of functions in addition to prolongations of events.
This approach better addresses the results of these
empirical studies.
Another approach to testing hierarchical perception
is to insert ‘‘foil’’ events at different levels of an anal-
ysis, on the hypothesis that the more structural the
event that the foil replaces, the more noticeable the foil
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Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies 87
will be. Although this method has yielded somewhat
encouraging responses (Dibben, 1994), the foils them-
selves alter the musical sequence and consequently
may have unintended effects that the method does not
control.
Lerdahl and Krumhansl (2007) introduces an indirect
but robust way to test intuitions of hierarchy through
patterns of tonal tension. Correlations between predic-
tions and empirical results are poor if the model cal-
culates sequential tension but high if it calculates
hierarchical tension down the prolongational tree (along
the lines of Figure 6b). This study provides strong behav-
ioral evidence of hierarchical hearing, including passages
of more than 40 events, in music from Bach to Messiaen.
Koelsch, Rohrmeier, Torrescuso, and Jentschke (2013)
also provides evidence of the perception of hierarchical
structure by manipulating global prolongational connec-
tions in paired phrases of two Bach chorales. While more
limited in scope than Krumhansl’s and my study, their
work takes the important step of providing evidence at
a neuroscientific level of hierarchically perceived pitch
structures.
Some scholars have downplayed the psychological
relevance of event hierarchies in favor of statistical
learning (Huron, 2006), schematic patterns (Gjerdin-
gen, 2007), or non-hierarchical mathematical modeling
(Tymoczko, 2011). From these perspectives, the positing
of elaborate hierarchical structures may seem unneces-
sary, a figment of the theoretical imagination. The
research reported in Lerdahl and Krumhansl and in
Koelsch et al., challenges such views by giving evidence
of non-local, long-range dependencies in musical
sequences. The issue of long-range dependencies is
worth emphasizing because statistical methods or local
formalisms such as Markov processes lack the capacity
to represent them.2
The issue of musical hierarchies is also relevant to
claims from a formal linguistic perspective. Hauser,
Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) argue that the language
capacity is unique in its capacity for recursion (self-
replicating hierarchy). Theoretical and empirical evi-
dence of musical hierarchies undercuts this view by
showing that music shares this fundamental property
with language. (For related discussion, see Jackendoff,
2
Koelsch et al., incorrectly state that Lerdahl and Krumhansl (2007)
‘‘did not provide evidence for processing of long-distance dependencies.’’
On the contrary, Lerdahl and Krumhansl provides far more evidence than
does Koelsch et al., albeit at a behavioral rather than brain level of descrip-
tion. See Lerdahl and Krumhansl (pp. 356-357) for discussion of precisely
this point.
88 Fred Lerdahl

2009; Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 2006; Lerdahl, 2013; Ler-
dahl & Krumhansl, 2007; Patel, 2008.)
Koelsch et al. (2013) employs a model and notation
for pitch-event hierarchies proposed in Rohrmeier
(2011). This approach differs in interesting ways from
GTTM’s. It is based on Riemann’s (1893/1896) function
theory of tonal harmony, with its T, D, and S functions
(for ‘‘tonic,’’ ‘‘dominant,’’ and ‘‘subdominant’’). Rie-
mann was vague about what these functions mean
(Hyer, 2011) and did not develop a syntax or hierarchy
of harmonic progression, not even the T!S!D!T
schema that subsequently became common in music-
theory pedagogy.
Rohrmeier integrates Riemann’s function categories
with the hierarchical prolongational tradition. To illus-
trate, Figure 7a displays the first measure of Rohrmeier’s
analysis of the Bach chorale ‘‘Ermuntre dich.’’ The top
of the tree specifies the key and branches into a tonic
prolongation (TR!TR TR). The tonic region at the left
again branches (TR!TR TR) and converts tonic region
to tonic function (TR!t). The first tonic function is
realized as I (a chord built on the first scale degree) and
then as a G major chord. The second tonic function is
rewritten as the relative minor chord acting as a tonic
variant (t!tp, where ‘‘tp’’ stands in German for ‘‘tonic
parallel,’’ which translates in English to ‘‘relative
minor’’); this is realized as VI and an E minor chord.
The tonic region at the right of the top of the tree breaks
down differently in its left branch to assign a dominant
region and a tonic function (TR!DR t). The dominant
region in turn parses into a subdominant region and
a dominant function (DR!SR d). The dominant is
realized as V, a D major chord. The subdominant region
decomposes into a subdominant function (SR!s) and
IV, a C major chord (s!IV, IV!C). The progression as
a whole fulfills a slightly elaborated version of the
T!S!D!T schema: t!tp!s!d!t.
Figure 7b presents a GTTM/TPS analysis of the same
passage. A Roman numeral analysis beneath the music
identifies the location of events in pitch space. The tonic
is established by the principle of the shortest path: the
initial G major chord is zero distance from itself, and

FIGURE 7. Bach chorale “Ermuntre dich,” beginning: (a) Rohrmeier’s analysis (redrawn with permission); (b) a GTTM/TPS analysis.

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the remaining events are closest to it if interpreted in
G major (TPS, pp. 193-201). Roman numerals follow by
filtering out non-harmonic tones and identifying roots.
A function analysis appears beneath the Roman numer-
als: T!Dep!D!T (‘‘Dep’’ ¼ departure). Further
down are the metrical grid and time-span segmentation.
Within these segments the most stable events are
selected, yielding quarter-note level d of the time-span
reduction. At the next time-span level c, again the most
stable events are chosen, leaving two tonic chords. The
prolongational analysis derives top-down from the
time-span reduction via the interaction principle, which
strongly constrains the derivation of prolongational
levels (GTTM, pp. 227-232; TPS, pp. 16-18, 159-161).
The letters in the prolongational tree refer to time-span
levels. At level c there is a tonic prolongation. At level d,
vi attaches to the first I and V to the second I, creating
a tensing-relaxing pattern. The numbers in the tree are
pitch-space distances computed by a distance rule (TPS,
p. 60).
The theories behind Figures 7a and 7b differ in their
assumptions and methods. For one thing, TPS yields
a numerical measure of tonal tension, whereas Rohrme-
ier’s model is qualitative and not concerned with ten-
sion. Another difference lies in the tree structures
employed and the role played by functionality. The trees
in Figure 7a resemble syntactic trees from early gener-
ative linguistics (Chomsky, 1965), including syntactic
categories (TR, DR, SR, t, tp, d, s) that are realized as
musical objects (I ¼ G major chord, etc.) only at the leaf
of the tree. In this respect, Rohrmeier’s model is
a sophisticated version of the approach taken in Keiler
(1977). The branches in Figure 7b, by contrast, do not
represent syntactic categories but simply show elabora-
tion to the right or left. The leaves of the tree remain at
higher levels of the tree; for instance, the initial I is still I
at levels d and c. TPS, pp. 35-40, proposes an abstraction
of events at underlying levels, but these structures
remain events instead of turning into function cate-
gories. Like many writers about music and language,
I do not think that music possesses syntactic categories.
I consider this to be a basic difference between music
and language. (For related discussion, see Swain, 1997,
and Patel, 2008; Bernstein, 1976, takes a position closer
to Rohrmeier’s.)
I also question the basis of Riemann’s function cate-
gories. Riemann developed his tripartite categorization
from the Hegel-influenced theory of Hauptmann (1853/
1991), with more distant echoes of Rameau’s (1726)
tonique, dominante, and sous-dominante. But Rameau
referred to chords, not functions, a distinction often
confused by Riemann, for whom, for example, a IV
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Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies 89
chord is always subdominant in function. While IV in
the cadential progression IV!V!I indeed acts as a pre-
dominant, in a I!IV!I progression at the ‘‘Amen’’
conclusion of a hymn, for instance, it functions as
a neighboring embellishment within a tonic prolonga-
tion. Its interpretation depends on its hierarchical posi-
tion. Therefore TPS derives functions—including a few
more than Riemann’s three, such as Dep for ‘‘depar-
ture,’’ P for ‘‘passing,’’ and N for ‘‘neighboring’’—from
the prolongational analysis. In my view, function is not
a core musical concept but an attribute of hierarchical
context.
This discussion has referred to chord distances, repre-
sented for instance by the numbers in the tree branches
in Figures 6b and 7b, and to shortest paths in pitch
space. These concepts belong not to event hierarchies
but to another kind of hierarchy, the tonal hierarchy,
a topic to which I now turn. The tonal hierarchy does
not address events in time but describes a hierarchy of
schematic relationships in long-term memory; it repre-
sents knowledge of the tonal system. Examples of the
tonal hierarchy are Krumhansl’s (1990) probe-tone rat-
ings, which yield multidimensional-scaling representa-
tions, and the pitch-space constructs in TPS. Listeners
intuitively construct event hierarchies using their
implicit knowledge of the tonal hierarchy.
GTTM leaves its stability conditions, a crucial input
to the derivation of prolongational structure, in an
underdeveloped state. TPS fills this lacuna by proposing
an algebraic pitch-space model inspired by Deutsch and
Feroe’s (1981) study of tonal alphabets and by empirical
studies of pitch, chord, and key relations summarized in
Krumhansl (1983, 1990). Thus GTTM’s qualitative the-
ory becomes, in many parts of TPS, a quantitative the-
ory—an important theoretical advance. The pitch-space
model calculates relatedness in terms of cognitive dis-
tance. It correlates with the empirical data and unifies
the levels of pitch, chord, and key in a formalism that
makes distances easy to compute.
TPS’s fundamental construct is the ‘‘basic space’’
shown in Figure 8a. The elements of the space are
pitches or pitch classes, depending on context. A pitch
or pitch class that is relatively stable at one level also
appears at the next higher level, just as with strong beats
in a metrical grid. At the bottom level is the available
alphabet, the chromatic scale. From this alphabet comes
a diatonic scale, in this case the C major scale, arranged
by step from low to high. Similarly, a triad arises from
members of the diatonic scale to which it belongs, in
this case a C major chord. Because the fifth is more
stable than the third of a triad, it forms the next level.
Finally, the top level is the root of the triad, the most
90 Fred Lerdahl

FIGURE 8. Diatonic basic space: (a) using note-letter names; (b) in numerical format (C ¼ 0, C# ¼ 1, . . . B ¼ 11); (c) in binary notation. All three
representations are oriented to I of C major.

FIGURE 9. Representations of the tonal hierarchy: (a) tracing the most stable position of each pitch class in TPS’s diatonic basic space; (b) the K-K
major key profile (from Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982, Figure 2, redrawn with permission).

stable of all. The basic space can represent any triad in

any key by systematically shifting diatonic and chordal
levels. Once numbers, whether Arabic or binary, replace
letter names, as in Figures 8b and c, algebraic operations
compute the distance from any chord in any key to any
chord in the same or another key. The binary represen-
tation in 8c is conceptually preferable to 8b, for it reg-
isters the presence or absence of a pitch at a given level
without naming pitches by letter or integer. TPS mostly
employs the integer representation in 8b because of its
familiarity in the music-theoretic literature and the rel-
ative ease of doing computations by Arabic rather than
binary numbers.
In Figure 9a, lines are drawn in the basic space from
the most stable representation of each pitch class to the
next. This pattern corresponds closely to Krumhansl
and Shepard’s (1979) and Krumhansl and Kessler’s
(1982) empirically derived key profile, shown in Figure
9b. (TPS’s minor-mode representation does not corre-
spond quite as closely to Krumhansl and Kessler’s
minor key profile. TPS treats the minor mode as anal-
ogous to the major mode on the view that listeners
maintain the same basic schema for both modes. My
attitude in this regard is rather like that of Schenker,
1906/1980.)
FIGURE 10. A portion of chordal space within a major key, arrayed in
two dimensions.
A distance algorithm transforms one configuration of
the basic space into another and measures the distance
traversed. The various distance values can be projected
geometrically so that numerical distance corresponds to
spatial distance. Figure 10 shows a portion of a two-
dimensional array of chordal space within a major key.
The columns display chords on the cycle of fifths, and
the rows display chords on the cycle of diatonic thirds.
Figure 11a similarly displays a portion of regional (or
key) space, with cycles of fifths on the vertical axis and
cycles of minor thirds on the horizontal axis, the latter
expressing an alternation of relative and parallel major-
minor relationships. This space corresponds to Krum-
hansl and Kessler’s representation of key space given in
Figure 11b. They derived their representation by

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 Concepts and Representations of Musical Hierarchies 91

FIGURE 11. (a) a portion of TPS’s regional space arrayed in two dimensions (major keys are in upper-case letters, minor keys in lower-case letters);
(b) Krumhansl & Kessler’s multidimensional scaling solution of key space (redrawn with permission).

multidimensional scaling of correlations among all the

major and minor key profiles.
Figure 12 combines Figures 10 and 11a into a repre-
sentation of chordal-regional space. The boldface letters
stand both for keys and their tonics. Arrayed within
each key are its other six triads. In a musical analysis
it can be illuminating to trace pitch-space paths as the
music unfolds, not only at the musical surface but also
at underlying prolongational levels. The arrows in Fig-
ure 12 trace the path for the beginning of the Bach
chorale given in Figure 7. A path for the entire chorale
would modulate into the nearby regions of D major,
A minor, and E minor.
Thus TPS’s space is hierarchical in two ways. First, it
postulates distinct levels of pitch organization: scales,
chords, and keys. Second, it makes hierarchical distinc-
tions within the categories of pitches and chords.
Pitches are superordinate or subordinate by virtue of
their rank in the basic space. Chords within a key are
superordinate or subordinate by virtue of their relative
distance from the most stable chord, or tonic.
TPS’s spatial projections from its algebraically calcu-
lated distances are useful but approximate. Chew (2008,
2014) develops a mathematically precise model of the
tonal hierarchy using interior points on a three-
dimensional spiral array that combines pitch, chord, FIGURE 12. A portion of chordal-regional space, with a path traced for
and key distances in a single geometric framework. Her the beginning of “Ermuntre dich” (see Figure 7b).
spiral array is consistent with results in Krumhansl
(1990) and TPS (see Chew, in press). parallel major and minor regions are collapsed into
TPS’s spatial mapping of key relations in Figure 11a single ‘‘mixed’’ parallel major-minor regions, as shown
resembles the Tonnetz that Riemann (1873, 1882/2011) in Figure 13a. Riemann’s early version of the Tonnetz is
proposed as a basis of tone relations. The parallel given in Figure 13b. Figures 13a and b both project
emerges more clearly if, following the late Romantic cycles of fifths, major thirds, and minor thirds. There
practice of composers such as Wagner and Strauss, are two basic differences, however. First, Figure 13a

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92 Fred Lerdahl
FIGURE 13. Related spaces: (a) TPS’s “mixed” regional space;
(b) Riemann’s early version of the Tonnetz.
describes key relations, while Figure 13b describes
pitch-class relations. Second, as mentioned, TPS’s spa-
tial representations are projections from the output of
algebraic rules, not a primary theoretical construct as
is the Tonnetz.
Riemann (1873) adapted the Tonnetz from Oettin-
gen’s (1866) acoustics-inspired theory and used it to
represent justly tuned intervals through combinations
of 3:2 and 5:4 ratios. His later version of the Tonnetz
(Riemann, 1915/1992), shown in Figure 14, twists the
structure to suppress the minor-second cycle on the
southwest-northeast diagonal of Figure 13b and dis-
plays triads as equilateral triangles. Neo-Riemannian
theory adopts this version of the Tonnetz to characterize
triadic relations and, in some cases, chart paths of har-
monic progressions, especially in chromatic tonal music
(Cohn, 2012; Gollin & Rehding, 2011). The closest tri-
adic relations are those that share two pitches; that is,
they share an edge of a triangle. In Figure 14a the most
proximate triads to the C major triad are the E minor
triad, which shares E and G, the C minor triad, which
shares C and G, and the A minor triad, which shares C
and E. The next closest triads share one pitch; two edges
must be traversed to reach them. Figure 14b shows that
the triads in this category, again in relation to the C
major triad, are (moving clockwise) the G major, Eb
major, Ab major, F major, A major, and E major triads.
The results in Figures 14 deviate from distances pro-
jected in Figures 10-12. Notably, the Tonnetz downplays
triads related by fifths, for it takes two steps rather than
one to reach a chord a fifth away. It treats triads related
by major and minor thirds as closer or equally close.
More broadly, the Tonnetz does not favor diatonic rela-
tions. Indeed, it does not represent the diatonic or any
other scale in which pitches are ordered from low to
high, as is taken for granted in standard music notation
and the layout of the piano and as is represented at the
scale level in TPS’s basic space. This, again, is a matter of
proximity: in a C major scale, for instance, D is adjacent
to C below and E above. A representation of pitch
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FIGURE 14. Riemann's later version of the Tonnetz , with triads
represented as equilateral triangles. In (a), the dashed arrows show
the most closely related triads to the C major triad, reached by
crossing one triangular edge. In (b), they show the next most related
triads, reached by crossing two edges.
proximity in tonal music should include a level that
directly shows scalar proximity.
This point applies to pitch classes as well as pitches.
An ascending major scale has the following ordered
intervals or interval classes (where 1 ¼ minor second,
2 ¼ major second, etc.): (2 2 1 2 2 2 1). Any other
sequence of diatonic pitches or pitch classes yields
larger interval or interval-class numbers. For example,
toggling from left to right between the top two rows in
Figure 14a yields the interval-class sequence (4 3 4 3 4 3
[3]). These pitch classes are not adjacent in a scalar
sense; rather, they are adjacent in triads related by
a sequence of diatonic thirds. (For related discussion,
see Tymoczko, 2011, pp. 30-44.)
At the musical surface, the Tonnetz does not represent
non-harmonic tones—for example, that D is non-
harmonic in the context of a C major triad. Nor, at
a global level, does it represent tonal regions. It exclu-
sively displays triads arrayed by common tones. Despite
this focus, it does not represent triadic roots. Unlike the
basic space of Figure 8, which registers the internal
hierarchy of the triad with the root most important, the
fifth next, and the third least, in correspondence with
the supporting psychoacoustics, the triangles in Figure
14 treat the pitches of a triad as equal. It is a sleight of
speech to name the pitches C-E-G in Figure 14 a C
major triad. C is not privileged. The Tonnetz is a hierar-
chically flat space.
This point applies as well to the sophisticated geomet-
rical structures in Tymoczko (2011). He emphasizes (pp.
226-245) third-related over fifth-related chord progres-
sions in diatonic tonality, since, in his flat space, chords
with two common tones are more proximate than
chords with one common tone. This perspective is at
odds with centuries of music theory, the primacy of
dominant-tonic cadences, and the statistics of chord
progressions (Huron, 2006, pp. 250-251; Temperley,

2009). In my view, his space is mathematically impec-
cable but problematic as a space for tonal music, which
requires a hierarchical pitch space. One of my first
motivations in developing TPS’s basic space and its
transformations was to find a principled way to make
fifth-related chords more proximate than third-related
chords, in correspondence with tonal practice.
These limitations of neo-Riemannian theory (and, to
a lesser extent, of Tymoczko’s theory) come from its
origin in pitch-class set theory, which was designed to
elucidate atonal music (Forte, 1973). Atonal music
assumes a flat space (TPS, pp. 344-346). A premise of
Cohn (2012) is that the triad has two natures, one based
on psychoacoustic features and the other on group-
theoretic properties that obtain in a flat space. Some of
these properties are formally deep and underlie aspects of
chromatic tonal music. Cohn (2011) makes the historical
argument that as triadic music becomes less diatonic,
hierarchical distinctions between key, chord, and scale
are increasingly vestigial. To specify a scale or even a key
in a highly chromatic passage becomes an unnecessary
distraction. In this view, TPS treats the transitional period
of late 19th-century chromatic triadic music from an 18th
century perspective, and neo-Riemannian theory
approaches it from a 20th century perspective.
While recognizing the merit of multiple perspectives,
I observe in return that it is easier to simplify TPS’s basic
space and its transformations, for instance by suppres-
sing the scale level in Figure 8, than to make the Tonnetz
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Thanks to Carol Krumhansl, David Temperley, and two
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