Set (music)
A
set in music theory, as in mathematics and general parlance, is a collection of objects. In musical contexts the term is traditionally applied most often to collections of pitches or pitch-classes, but theorists have extended its use to other types of musical entities, so that one may speak of sets of durations or timbres, for example. Prime form of five pitch class set from Igor Stravinsky's
In memoriam Dylan Thomas A set by itself does not necessarily possess any additional structure, such as an ordering. Nevertheless, it is often musically important to consider sets that are equipped with an order relation; in such contexts, bare sets are often referred to as "unordered", for the sake of emphasis. Two-element sets are called dyads, three-element sets trichords. Sets of higher cardinalities are called tetrachords, pentachords, hexachords, heptachords, octachords, nonachords, decachords, undecachords, and, finally, the dodecachord. A time-point set is a duration set where the distance in time units between attack points, or time-points, is the distance in semitones between pitch classes.