''For Ann (rising)'' is a piece of

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

composed by American composer and music theorist

James Tenney James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microt ...

in 1969. The piece incorporates the

Shepard tone A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the ''Shepard scale''. This crea ...

concept, named after Tenney's colleague at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, psychologist

Roger Shepard Roger Newland Shepard (January 30, 1929 – May 30, 2022) was an American cognitive science, cognitive scientist and author of the "universal law of generalization" (1987). He was considered a father of research on spatial relations. He studied m ...

. The technique which the piece uses is more properly described as a continuous Risset scale, or a Shepard-Risset

glissando In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...

. It consists of a repeating sequence of

sine wave A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or sinusoid (symbol: ∿) is a periodic function, periodic wave whose waveform (shape) is the trigonometric function, trigonometric sine, sine function. In mechanics, as a linear motion over time, this is ''simple ...

s arranged in a glissando between twelve and fifteen rising at any time and fading in and out, entering a

minor sixth In music theory, a minor sixth is a musical interval encompassing six staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and is one of two commonly occurring sixths (the other one being the major sixth). It is qualified as ''minor'' bec ...

below their predecessors (; ). The concept of the piece derived from Tenney's speculations on

auditory illusion Auditory illusions are Illusion, illusions of real sound or outside stimulus. These false perceptions are the equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the Stimulus (physiology), stimulus, or sound ...

s in his 1961 master's thesis ''Meta (+) Hodos'', an early application of

gestalt theory Gestalt may refer to: Psychology * Gestalt psychology, a school of psychology * Gestalt therapy, a form of psychotherapy Arts and media * ''Gestalt'' (album), a 2012 album by the Spill Canvas * ''Gestalt'' (manga), a manga series by Yun Kōga * ...

and

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

to music.

Variations

Imagining an inverted version of ''For Ann (rising)'', American composer

Philip Corner Philip Lionel Corner (b. The Bronx, New York, April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist. Biography After The ...

once remarked that the piece "must be optimistic! (Imagine the depressing effectiveness of it—he could never be so cruel—downward)..." . Tenney suggested in later years that the piece could be "regenerated" with the distance between successive voices, the

(1.6 in

just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is a musical tuning, tuning system in which the space between notes' frequency, frequencies (called interval (music), intervals) is a natural number, whole number ratio, ratio. Intervals spaced in thi ...

, 1.587 in

equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or Musical tuning#Tuning systems, tuning system that approximates Just intonation, just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into steps such that the ratio of the frequency, frequencie ...

), being tuned to

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their summation, sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities and with , is in a golden ratio to if \fr ...

phi (1.618). He noted that this would aurally achieve a more illusory effect, because then all first-order difference tones between adjacent voices would be present in lower voices .

Sources

* * * * {{wikicite, ref={{harvid, Wannamaker, 2021, reference=Wannamaker, Robert. 2021.
''The Music of James Tenney, Volume 1: Contexts and Paradigms''
University of Illinois Press.

External links

''James Tenney: Selected Works 1961–1969'' at Artifact Records
Process music pieces 1969 compositions

Variations

See also

Sources

External links