[Smt-talk] Fwd: First Species Question

[Peter Schubert, Prof.]

I think part integrity is indeed the point. I have found that anti-parallels are not uncommon in Renaissance music and there are some in Bach chorales.  This could be because contrary motion trumps vertical interval sameness, or because a twelfth really isn't a fifth. Vicentino, discussing simultaneous skips, allows anti-parallel fifths in five parts and anti-parallel octaves in eight parts (l'antica musica 1555, bk 2, ch 30, f.41v.).

For a couple of examples from Palestrina, see Missa "Vestiva I colli", Kyrie, mm. 78 & 89 (Soderlund + Scott 1971, p. 172), or Missa "Sanctorum meritis," Agnus, m. 26 (Soderlund + Scott, p. 158); for Bach, see "Jesu, der du meine Seele" (Mainous + Ottman 1966, #37, m. 1) or "Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" (Mainous + Ottman #13, m. 8).

It would be interesting to know where this prohibition came from.

Peter Schubert,
Schulich School of Music
McGill University
555 Sherbooke St. W.
Montreal, QC  H3A 1E3
From: smt-talk-bounces at societymusictheory.org [mailto:smt-talk-bounces at societymusictheory.org] On Behalf Of Dunsby, Jonathan
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 10:16 AM
To: smt-talk at societymusictheory.org
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Fwd: First Species Question

...fifths are (and sound like) fifths, no matter what registers...
Best regards,
Donna Doyle

Aaron Copland School of Music
Queens College
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Flushing, NY  11367

Well you say that, but almost as another thread I'm wondering just how and where, from a theory-building point of view, the illusion of 'part' integrity kicks in or doesn't? When e.g. a voice actually dips under the piano bass line in a 19C Lied, how come we don't hear it as the 'bass' (shades of Dichterliebe No. 2, of course, beloved of us theorists, but such happens all over Western art music, here and there)? My teacher always said "because that's what Messiaen taught us". But is there a history-of-theory etiology to this issue or perhaps non-issue? (Obviously, fifths with the 'bass' and fifths entailing only inner parts are not, in general, the same thing....)



Jonathan
______________
Jonathan Dunsby
Chair, Music Theory Department
Professor of Music Theory
Eastman School of Music

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