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

[Dmitri Tymoczko]

On Sep 4, 2009, at 5:22 AM, Nicolas Meeùs wrote:

> It seems to me that the voice leading that can be subsumed in Roman  
> numerals is not the actual contrapuntal voice leading, but rather an  
> abstract one, at the level of pitch classes, without consideration  
> of registers. This type of voice leading is present in chord  
> strumming on the guitar, even when no account (conscious or not) is  
> taken of the counterpoint – this is how the guitar and other plucked  
> instruments played a prominent role at the origin of tonality.

I'm a little apprehensive about the idea that "Roman numerals refer to  
voice leading."  Roman numerals are a system for describing harmonic  
relationships.  They really have no implications about voice leading  
whatsoever.  One and the same chord progression can imply many  
different voice leadings.  If you want to talk about voice leading,  
why not just talk about voice leading, using terms and tools that are  
specifically designed for the job?  Otherwise, we risk a severely  
muddled discourse in which terms are being used to mean something  
other than what we say they mean -- which just makes the field  
impenetrable to students and outsiders.

There's an analogous situation in "neo-Riemannian analysis."  When you  
look at the definitions of "L, P, and R" they're almost always  
harmonic -- P is the transformation that sends a major triad to the  
minor triad with the same root.  Yet in actual analytical contexts,  
they are often used to describe voice leading situations -- e.g. the  
situation where the third of a major triad moves down by semitone to  
become minor.  This has always seemed odd to me -- if we want to talk  
about voice leading, let's just do that.

DT

Dmitri Tymoczko
Associate Professor of Music
310 Woolworth Center
Princeton, NJ 08544-1007
(609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)
http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri