Day-O'Connell Explores Pentatonicism

From the opening bass lick of "My Girl" and countless rock guitar solos, to 'Amazing Grace' and any number of African-American spirituals, many well-known tunes use the five-note pentatonic scale. But this familiar scale ? a common example is the notes created by the black keys on a piano ? would have been quite unusual in 19th-century Europe, and even music scholars since then have had trouble putting it in historical context, according to Jeremy Day-O'Connell, assistant professor of music at Knox College.

Day-O'Connell's new book, "Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy," is hailed as the first comprehensive history of how Western composers of classical music expanded their musical vocabulary to include the pentatonic scale.

The critically acclaimed book was published this year as part of the prestigious series, Eastman Studies in Music, published by University of Rochester Press.

Although it is an important development in Western music, pentatonicism has not been studied extensively, Day-O'Connell says. European composers, as well as music historians and scholars, focused on the seven-note major scale ? the 'do-re-mi' scale that you can play with just the seven white keys in an octave on the piano.

"Pentatonicism in nineteenth-century music encompasses hundreds of instances, many of which predate by decades the more famous examples from Debussy and Dvor?k." Day-O'Connell's book features examples representing virtually every major nineteenth-century composer, including Schubert, Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler.

"Probably the most popular example would be the Largo theme of Dvorak's 'New World Symphony,' but we see it used more subtly in the songs of Schubert, the operas of Wagner, the symphonies of Mendelssohn, even in the opening of a Handel aria," Day O'Connell says.

"We're all familiar with the seven-note major scale. All beginning musicians spent hours practicing it, and our culture considers it the foundation of music. The pentatonic scale uses the five most 'stable' notes of the major scale," Day-O'Connell says. "Somehow, five notes are just enough to be both simple and interesting ? which is why pentatonic scales are found in music systems throughout the world."

First described by Westerners as "Chinese" or "Scotch," the pentatonic scale is found in many other musical cultures, including the British Isles, West Africa, Southeast Asia and aboriginal America, Day-O'Connell says.

"I've always loved the sound of the pentatonic scale," says Day-O'Connell, who has studied piano and choral conducting, and also plays guitar, bass, drums, and steel drums. "My research would have been much less productive and much more difficult, had I not been so sensitive to the pentatonic scale, as a listener."

The book's appendix cites more than 400 examples of pentatonicism in Western music ? what the publisher calls "an unprecedented resource" for music scholars.

Julian Rushton, professor emeritus of music at the University of Leeds, has praised Day-O'Connell's work as "a book that needed to be written," while William Caplin, professor of music at McGill University in Montreal and past president of the Society for Music Theory, called it a "sophisticated exploration of a largely neglected topic."

A member of the Knox faculty since 2004, Day-O'Connell is a graduate of Swarthmore College, with master's and doctoral degrees from Cornell University.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 44 nations. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.