Set (music)

"Set class" redirects here. For the concept in set theory, see Class (set theory).
Prime form of five pitch class set from Igor Stravinsky's In memoriam Dylan Thomas

In music theory, as in mathematics (see set) and general parlance, a set (pitch set, pitch-class set, set class, set form, set genus, pitch collection) is a collection of objects. In musical set theory, the term set 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 as well, for example.

A set by itself does not necessarily possess any additional structure, such as an ordering or permutation. Nevertheless, it is often musically important to consider sets that are equipped with an order relation (called segments); in such contexts, bare sets are often referred to as unordered, for the sake of emphasis.

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.

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