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Posted by 02
on 4/19/2008, 2:52 pm, in reply to "Half-tone notation -- is there a system out there?"
67.182.102.48
Much of music theory of the mid-late 20th century is based on an integer system in order to deal with atonal music. Allen Forte is one of the major contributors to this theory, and his book "The Structure of Atonal Music is seminal in this discipline. Good work developing the idea of r etc. on your own. In the literature, the "first note of the aggregate," your "r" is understood to be 0, and each half step ascending is the next number.
For the tenth and eleventh notes from zero, you'll often find T for 10 and E for eleven, allowing for text to read: "the pitch set <014TE > can be seen clearly in measures 10 and 15..." Without T and E, the set would read <0141011> and mean something totally different.
For further references check out the Journal of Music Theory, Perspectives of New Music, and other journals in your local university music library.
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