[Smt-talk] Fwd: First Species Question

[Donna Doyle]

Thank you, Dmitri, for this gorgeous Josquin. What a master.

Before seeing the Josquin, I was going to say: "Since Anonymous,  
performers/ composers have given
themselves license to set the meanings of texts, e. g., florid  
melismas on "Allelujia" in 11th c organum.

Josquin, however, sets this text without breaking rules. Re m. 51:  
Observe that the F is dissonant--an accented
passing tone, established in mm 48, -9 and -50.  What's going on here  
is voice crossing to set the text
that produces parallel 3rds and 6ths. Acoustically, m. 51's C above F  
is a fifth, but the ear will interpret
it as a dissonance resolving to the E below the C. Context!

Donna Doyle

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

tele: 718-997-3819
fax:  718-997-3849
email: donna.doyle at qc.cuny.edu
email: donnadoyle at att.net

_____________________

On Jul 11, 2010, at 10:24 PM, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:

> I did a little computer search, and found a nice Renaissance  
> instance of consecutive fifths in two voices: Josquin's "Gaude  
> Virgo, Mater Christi" at "Fulget resurrectio," where the soprano and  
> alto sing (C4, G4)->(C5, F4).
>
> You can find an online version here (m. 51):
>
> http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/jos-gaud.pdf
>
> It occurs to me that there are two distinct phenomena here:  
> "antiparallel fifths" such as (C4, G4)->(F3, C5), and "crossed  
> fifths" such as (C4, G4)->(C5, F4).  In the latter case, we create  
> genuine parallels by removing a voice crossing; in the first case,  
> we create the parallels by shifting octave.
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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