[Smt-talk] I - II- IV as a progression (counterpoint)

[Patrick Fitzgibbon]

> But in styles where counterpoint and voiceleading are not central features,
> are
> they still operative, and/or should they still be operative, in defining
> the
> musical structures that emerge?  Or to put a little less abstractly: if
> somebody
> is strumming away on the guitar, playing a chord sequence using the
> conventional
> voicings and with no regard to traditional voiceleading--or at least, no
> *conscious* regard--is it helpful to account for the resultant music in
> terms
> strongly directed by voiceleading or contrapuntal concerns and practices?
>  Or
> (and I hope I'm not leading the witness here) does appealing to
> counterpoint
> risk reading the practices of one musical style onto the other,
> overdetermining
> and perhaps distorting our interpretation of the strummy guitar
> progression?
>

Very interesting question. I tend to think that, poietic heuristics aside
(e.g. fretboard shapes, digital configurations, etc.), voice-leading is
indeed a central feature of the style insofar as its tokens are taken as
objects of aural experience. While the notion of some indissoluble *Klang*
as a perceptual atom is suggestive, I'm inclined to regard a given frequency
complex as a container from which content is intentionally individuated
(that is, drawn into experiential focus). Considered thus, the individual
"tone" is horizonally qualified by its relation to the composite sonority in
which it participates, a relation that then becomes a *property* attributed
to the tone.

My description of the "chord-as-property" perspective may seem highly
speculative, if not mystical. David Huron has expressed it more clearly and
persuasively: "Pitch provides a convenient 'hanger' on which to hang a set
of spectral components and to attribute them to a single acoustic source"
("Tone and Voice: A Derivation of the Rules of Voice-Leading from Perceptual
Principles," *Music Perception* 19 (Sep 2001): 7). Accepting this position,
it follows from the Gestalt Law of Proximity (and much subsequent research,
especially Huron's) that theories of voice-leading respond to a cognitively
prior component of tonal audition.

I think you alluded to all this commentary in your suggestion that a
musician (productive or receptive) may not be "consciously" concerned with
such issues, which implies the fascinating distinction between adopted
productive heuristic (e.g. chord-shape A, then chord-shape B) and inherent
receptive process. I'd be interested in others' thoughts with respect to
chord as an autonomous auditory image, and (following John's provocative
original question) the degree to which such an auditory image (or its verbal
reflection) is shaped by conceptual filtration.

-- 
Patrick Fitzgibbon
Graduate Student in Music Theory
University of Iowa
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