[Smt-talk] Subdominant versus Predominant

Sat Feb 25 13:37:54 PST 2012

Interesting discussion, again. I still cannot believe that a country which proudly produced the concept of Subdominant had to reject it so completely in the course of the 19th century. 

as Nicholas Meeus wrote: As I tried to show in my preceding message, Rousseau was unclear as to the meaning of subdominant, and wrote: "I may be mistaken in the acception of these two words, not having under the eyes the writings of Rameau as I write this article. He may understand by subdominant simply the note that is one degree under the dominant." I added that it was not Rameau who first gave the name, but probably Dandrieu, and that Dandrieu most probably understood the word as meaning "the degree under the dominant". This is how the term is understood in French today.

I wend to our library and found Traite d'Harmonie by Henri Reber, professor of theory at Paris conservatoire, published in 1862. On page 19 I have found an excellent musical examle and thorough explanation of sous-dominante as the scale step a p.5 below tonic, as a reflection of the dominante. I cannot be sure  that all French treatises on harmony had this same explanation, but I have found two more conservatoire textbooks which followed, accroding to their introduction, M. Reber's treatise. By the way, Reber begins with the derivation of harmony from the corps sonore, just as Fetis some twenty years before. I have a strange feeling that, contrary to Dr. Meeus' attempt, French teachers of harmony were proud of Rameau's achevements and used them extensively in their pedagogic practice.

And even if it is possible to prove with the documents that some of the purely theoretical reasoning escaped the textbooks, it is ultimately difficult to prove that beautiful moments in the scores of French composers intentionally avoided the use of subdominant triad in root position as the third function. There are some moumental subdominants in arias from operas of Gounoud and Massenet, some exclusive and emphasized sudbominants in instrumental works of Franck and Saint-Saens, without which the harmonic progressions would lack French finesse. And, definitely, no French texbooks of the 19th century used the term Predominant.

Best,

Ildar Khannanov
Peabody Conservatory
solfeggio7 at yahoo.com

________________________________
 From: "Ninov, Dimitar N" <dn16 at txstate.edu>
To: Thomas Noll <noll at cs.tu-berlin.de> 
Cc: "smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org" <smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org> 
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 3:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Subdominant versus Predominant

Only that we must not forget that harmonic syntax does not exist without a tonal center (T) to which all functions relate. Sequential order or not, it is governed by the tonic. If the sequence or progression modulates, the new tonic will govern. 

In other words, the question "Which function is typically placed before a dominant chord" will receive the answer: "The subdominant function as expressed by IV and II). 

I was also puzzled that Kostka and Payne consider IV a substitute for II. This is strange, given the fact that in classical and romantic music the typical subdominant bass is the 4th scale degree. II6 is a substitute for IV, not the other way around. In jazz, however, the II gets the upper hand, as II-V-I is the skeleton. Perhaps this is what confused the authors.

Best regards,

Dimitar 

Dr. Dimitar Ninov, Lecturer
School of Music
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, Texas 78666

_____
From: Thomas Noll [noll at cs.tu-berlin.de]
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 1:22 PM
To: Ninov, Dimitar N
Cc: smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Subdominant versus Predominant

Dear Colleagues,
Pre-dominant is an (implicit) syntagmatic concept, dealing with the sequential order of harmonies in a harmonic progression.
Subdominant is a paradigmatic concept, dealing with the relative position of a harmonic function within an abstract system of such functions.
Sincerely
Thomas Noll

On 24.02.2012, at 16:55, Ninov, Dimitar N wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

I have been thinking for a long time about the term "predominant" which has been in use mostly in Schenkerian theory or in theoretical formulations influenced by Schenker and his followers. I have come to the conclusion that this term is theoretically unjustified, and my arguments in support of this statement are explained below.

As the planets in the solar system gravitate around the sun, so the chords in a tonal system gravitate around the tonic. The tonic is the only center of gravity in a key. Therefore, the harmonic function of any given chord is validated by its attitude towards the tonic. This attitude depends on the distance between the chord and the tonic, on the one hand, and on the structure of the chord, on the other.

The term "subdominant" suggests that the IV chord is located a fifth below the tonal center, and that it is a "lower dominant". However, the term "predominant" contains no reference to the tonal center but to the dominant triad itself, as if a key had two centers. The attempt to validate a harmonic function with no relation to the tonal center seems theoretically unsupported to me.

The IV and the II chords are called "predominants" because they stand "before" the dominant. But they also stand before the tonic (IV-I, II-I6; II6/5-I, etc.): how are they predominant in that case? On the other hand, I could attach the label "PD" to the tonic, the mediants, and all the different borrowed or altered chords that can precede the dominant. Would all these chords be “predominants” in such a context?

Behind the dismissal of the term "subdominant" in a portion of contemporary American music theory stands the Schenkerian notion that a plagal relationship and a plagal cadence do not exist in music. According to this idea, any connection between IV and I, for example, will be interpreted as a "tonic prolongation". Therefore, the former subdominant function is evaluated not in the light of the tonic, but in the light of the dominant. This is how Schenkerian theory created two separate centers of evaluation of harmonic functions: the tonic, on the one hand, and the dominant, on the other. Two suns in a solar system.

I would highly appreciate your thoughts concerning this matter.

Best regards,

Dimitar

Dr. Dimitar Ninov, Lecturer
School of Music
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, Texas 78666
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Thomas Noll
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noll at cs.tu-berlin.de<mailto:noll at cs.tu-berlin.de>
Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya, Barcelona
Departament de Teoria i Composició

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