One Hundred Years of Research on Octatonicism, Second Part: From Antokoletz to Lerdahl

Abstract

The first part of this article (previous issue), subtitled “From Yavorsky to van den
Toorn”, presented the first major research on the octatonic scale, referred to as “the
second mode of limited transpositions” by Olivier Messiaen in particular. In it
appeared, in chronological order (from 1908 to 1983), the work of Boleslav
Yavorsky, Olivier Messiaen, Ernö Lendvai, Arthur Berger, Joseph N. Straus and
Pieter C. van den Toorn, emphasizing from various perspectives the importance of
the octatonic scale and its influence on such composers as Bartók and Stravinsky.
The second part of the article examines more recent research, often exploratory, in which Elliott Antokoletz, Richard Taruskin, George Perle, Richard Cohn, Paul
Wilson, Cheong Wai-Ling, Allen Forte and Fred Lerdahl bring their distinctive
analytical concept to light; again, special focus is on factors of tonal polarity. This
part ends with a bibliography on octatonicism that lists research not specified in the
text and footnotes related to both parts of the article.