Quartal melody: Star Trek fanfare
Intervals of a fourth, such as the interval from C to F, are common in western music, but consecutive intervals of this size are not. Quartal harmony is based on intervals of fourths, and quartal melodies use a lot of fourths, particularly consecutive fourths.
Maybe the most famous quartal melody is the opening fanfare to Star Trek (original series). Here's a transcription of the opening line:
And here is the same music with the intervals of a fourth circled.
The theme opens with two consecutive fourths, there's an augmented fourth in the middle, then two more consecutive fourths. There are two major thirds in the phrase above, which you could call diminished fourths.
Incidentally, there are four bell tones before the melody above begins, and the interval between the first two tones is a fourth.
Making the sheet musicHere's the Lilypond source code I used to create the images above.
\begin{lilypond} \score { \relative e'{ \time 4/4 \partial 2 a4. d8 | \tuplet 3/2 {g4~ 4 ges4} \tuplet 3/2 {d4 b4 e4} | a2 ~ 4 ~ 8 8 | des1 } \end{lilypond}This uses a few Lilypond features I hadn't used before.
- The \partial command for the two pickup notes.
- The \tuple command for the triples.
- The shortcut of not repeating the names repeated notes.
The last point applies twice, writing g4 4 rather than g4 g4 and writing a2 4 8 8 rather than a2 a4 a8 a8.
Related posts- Circle of fifths and roots of two
- Lee distance in music and codes
- Humming St. Christopher
- Perfect fifths, octaves, and ergodic maps
- Dividing an octave into 14 parts