Mark Sallmen
The past twenty years have seen the development of a significant body of literature which explores the use of interval cycles in atonal music. (An interval cycle is a repeating pattern of one or more pitch or pitch-class intervals). Perle (1977a, 1977b, 1980, & 1981), Headlam (1985 & 1990), and Porter (1989 90) focus on the music of Alban Berg. Lambert (1990) examines the structural role of interval cycles in the music of Charles Ives. Morris (1992) identifies the alternation of pc intervals 3 and b as central to the organization of Schoenberg's Opus 23/1. This paper extends the work of these authors in two ways. First, it adds Webern to the growing list of composrs whose music can be meaningfully explained with interval cycles. Second, the paper addresses large-scale context in which cycles govern the progressions from one section to the next. Moreover, since these large-scale cycles are magnified projections of cycles found at, or just beneath the musical surface, the paper provides a unified "organic" view of the piece.