Two ways of defining tonal strength and implications for recognition of tone series

This article reports an experiment that tested whether two types of tonally strong tone series are equally well recognized. The experiment also tested whether tonally weak series are less well recognized than tonally strong series, tonally strong series being transformed into tonally weak series by changing from the ionian to the phrygian church mode. The results show that (1) both types of tonally strong series are, on average, equally well recognized and (2) series presented in the phrygian mode are less well recognized than series presented in the ionian mode. The implications of these findings for research into tone-series recognition are discussed.