[Smt-talk] First Species Question

[Ildar Khannanov]

Dear Dmitri and All,
 
I have found another example of antiparallel fifth, in Palestrina's 29 Motets, No3, Nigra sunt sed formosa, at the words Nolite me considerare. You will find two instances in the lower pair of voices, the second is quite straightforward. It looks like Palestrine took pleasure in the sound of these fifth.
 
Best,
 
Ildar Khannanov
Peabody Institute
Johns Hopkins University
 
 
--- On Tue, 7/13/10, Dmitri Tymoczko <dmitri at Princeton.EDU> wrote:


From: Dmitri Tymoczko <dmitri at Princeton.EDU>
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] First Species Question
To: "smt-talk smt" <smt-talk at societymusictheory.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 8:17 AM


Let me say one more thing about the Josquin example I passed on.

Many people have suggested (both publicly and privately) that the F is an accented passing tone, and indeed the context seems to support that reading.  However, it is worth pointing out that theorists often prohibit parallel fifths, even when one of the notes is a passing tone.  That is, in Renaissance counterpoint, (C4, G4)->(Bb3, F4)->(A3, F4) is often illegal, even though the Bb can be described as a passing tone.  (My sense is that the underlying progression is pretty rare in the Renaissance.)

One issue here is whether it makes sense, in a Renaissance context, to speak of a "dissonant perfect fifth."  Or for that matter, a "nonstructural perfect fifth."  Perhaps it is more accurate to say we have two consecutive perfect fifths, which are by definition consonant.

The issues are subtle, and it's worth treading carefully; there are a variety of ways of understanding the passage. I myself favor an explanation that says: the passage is totally fine because the voices do not move in parallel; for Josquin, perhaps, the prohibition on parallel fifths was a prohibition on a certain kind of motion (voices actually moving in parallel), and not on a certain kind of harmonic state (two fifths in succession).

Why do I care about this?

I am interested in the thought that the conception of "forbidden parallels" evolved over time.  I like the idea that earlier composers were more focused on a specific type of motion, while later composers were more focused on a general harmonic situation.  It helps explain phenomena that I've noticed before -- for instance, that Palestrina and Lassus will permit parallel-ish things that later composers generally avoid, or that Bach will sometimes get out of parallels in a cheap way, as if reverting to the older conception in a pinch.

What particularly interests me here is the thought that it's another way in which we can see composers becoming increasingly aware of the harmonic dimension of music; usually, we understand this as a matter of becoming more aware of chords and how they move.  (That is, the growing tendency to think of chords as objects that progress in certain specific ways, rather than being byproducts of melodic motion.)  But it's interesting to see a similar phenomenon occurring in the treatment of antiparallel and contrary-motion fifths.  Here the harmonic perspective leads to an increased sensitivity to these pseudo-parallels.

Pedagogically, this leads to differences of opinion between theorists like Schenker (who reject antiparallel fifths, and to that extent are more "harmonic" in their approach) and Lewin (who, as Ed Gollin reminded me, permitted antiparallels, and to that extent is more "linear").

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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