Terminological Issues and Propositions in the Search for an Ontology of Harmonic Structures

Abstract

This article presents a fragment from a larger research with the intention of anticipating some of its main topics, which aim to assemble a pedagogical theoretical body for music harmony in the context of the globalized and diverse world of the 21st century. The research fragment presented discusses terminological issues and propositions for an ontological study of harmonic structures that concerns itself with the definition of what types of musical sound objects of definite pitch do exist, how many are there, which properties they possess and their musical consequences, all organized in a logical taxonomical system referred to by means of an adequate terminology. The text first establishes the need for such an ontology, and proceeds with a description of the terminological issues involved in a secondary term formation action, a subsequent renaming effort that is all the more challenging when dealing with a field with a huge lifetime such as music theory. The methodology used in the terminological recreation is then described, explaining its preference for terms that, regardless of their lexicographic origins and prevalence, are single-words that provide biunivocal association, that avoid ambiguity by synonymy and polysemy, that are self-explanatory, and that are of easy translation using same-lexeme words similar in graphical form. It is then given a brief summary of the structure of the created ontology, followed by the definitions, lexicographic origins, and neologism-creating derivational strategies for all its main proposed terms, including those to be used in the classifications of harmonic structures according to the criteria of cardinality, chirality, azimuth, triadic intrinsicality, monadic, triadic, and transpositional proclivities, limiting characteristics, and modalization, superset and subset relationships. To close the text, a schematic view of the organizational structure of the ontology is shown, together with its translation into three different languages.