Chiasmus in Music

Well, let's just say that I am the guilty one who raised the issue....I thank Oracolo for passing the ball.

I remember something regarding Bach's Mass in B minor, but then I don't know if the matter has evolved and the principles were taken up by Bach's successors.

I was just asking myself the same thing...

What is this stuff?

On wiki I found:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmo

... but with music it seems like it's not related

I found this interesting PDF, I'm reporting it

http://www.diastemas...a07/DePirro.pdf

Lucas wrote:

I found this interesting PDF, I'm reporting it

http://www.diastemas...a07/DePirro.pdf

I read

Chiasmus. The parallelism of terms with opposite meanings corresponds in musical language to the retrograde. A more adherent similarity to not only geometric parallelisms can be found in WEBERN, Variations op. 27 (III movement).

I wouldn't have said that, I would have thought more of a cross...the retrograde?

Chiasmus or chiasma in music is typical of polyphony. If you put two lines in contrary motion that "leapfrog" each other or that, continuing the contrary motion, change direction, then you have a "chiastic" configuration, much more visible than in poetry. Poetic chiasmus, however, is more similar to contrary motion itself. "I write, you read" is a chiasmus (verb subject subject verb)

In language, chiasmus is a rhetorical figure of construction and consists of the crossed or mirror-like arrangement between words within a sentence or a verse.

Chiasmus can be:

- Small: when it concerns words and phrases (autonomous syntactic elements of the sentence) for example: Women, knights, arms, loves... (instead of women, loves...)

- Simple: when elements that have identical syntactic functions are placed at the extremes. For example: Art and science are free, and free is their teaching. The subjects are found at the beginning and at the end.

- Complex:

a) with "semantic" valence in mirror form for example: "He who has bread has no teeth and he who has teeth has no bread"

"syntactic" when syntactic functions are mirrored for example: "If it is hot, cool it down, and warm it up if it is cold..."

Obviously everything can be translated into music, which is why I delegate to the experts

Obviously this " "... has nothing to do with it .... it was a "b )"

Zamba wrote:

"syntactic" when the syntactic functions are mirrored, for example: "If it is hot, cool it down, and heat it up if it is cold..."

Oracolo wrote:

I remember something regarding Bach's Mass in B minor, but then I don't know if the matter has evolved and the principles were taken up by Bach's successors.

I would say more the St. Matthew Passion where there is a copious use of madrigalisms, descriptive elements, and rhetorical figures such as indeed "chiasmus"... which musically produces the figure of the cross.