[Smt-talk] Doubling the tone of resolution

[Clemens Kemme]

Dear all,

My remark to Nicholas was in the context of a small discussion we had after his reference to his old teacher who had taught him that in a 9-8 suspension there should always be at least one octave between the 9 and the tone of resolution. It went as follows:

CK: But what about bar 6 of Mozart's Hostias?
NM: It merely shows that what we were supposed to do in the harmony class has little to do with real music… Not really worth further discussion on SMT.'
CK: (…) I'm sorry to disagree (…). Your teacher's rule of course still covers more than 90% of the cases. And in the case of the Hostias one could observe that the lower bass is present in the orchestral bass, moreover follows immediately in the vocal bass too. This is also the case in many Bach chorales. It only shows that the rule as formulated by your teacher is too strict (although maybe useful for beginners), and that one should take the context and the instrumentation into account. And if what we prescribe in the theory class has little do do with real music, how will we convince our talented students? A point worth discussing on SMT, I think.

I think that it was never Fux's intention to prescribe anything that had 'little to do with real music'. On the contrary, he explicitly referred to Palestrina as his great example. But he had a very practical approach to teaching composition and believed in a well-considered pedagogical build-up, step by step to the Parnassus of 'real music'. And for that purpose he introduced a quite strict method. And a successful one: even Mozart used the method in his lessons to Attwood (he may have learned from it himself, since his father had a copy).

I don't believe in an opposition of 'strict' harmony/counterpoint vs. 'real' music. I fully agree with Olli Väisälä (see his reaction today), when he talks about the 'fruitfulness of the interaction of analysis and writing, predominantly based on the analysis and emulation of  "real music"'.

Talented music students get really motivated when they see how certain 'rules' only serve to help them to get certain aspects of writing under control. They have no problem understanding that 'rules' are often well-considered simplications, temporary limitations. For them, all of this has everything to do with real music.

Clemens Kemme
Conservatory of Amsterdam
ckemme at xs4all.nl

Op 8 nov. 2012, om 23:21 heeft Nicolas Meeùs <nicolas.meeus at paris-sorbonne.fr> het volgende geschreven:

> I do not want to reactivate a thread that may be considered exhausted, but some of the correspondents that I had contacted privately about it expressed their regret that the discussion was not pursued in the open.
> 
> Clemens Kemme, in particular, wrote "if what we prescribe in the theory class has little do do with real music, how will we convince our talented students?"
> 
> This question, as obvious as it may seem, raises several further questions:
> – in what sense could a class about tonal music have to do with real music of our time?
> – why should we teach "real music", while historical books about music writing often taught "strict writing", explicitly remote from "real music" (I am thinking, specifically, of Fux' Gradus).
> – what is "strict writing" (enge Satz), what is "free writing" (freie Satz)?
> 
> I may have learned tonal writing in the last times of "strict writing". In the Brussels Conservatory where I studied, we worked on the late-19th and early-20th-century texts given as final exams in the Paris Conservatoire. I studied them in full consciousness that they did not correspond to "real music", but that they represented some form of "strict writing", and that anyone able to cope with that strict writing would be able to easily perform free composition (although I realized at the same time that any contemporary free composition would not be contemporary tonal practice anymore).
> 
> In Paris-Sorbonne University today, one expects from the students that they write "in styles" – i.e. in the style of this or that composer, i.e. free composition. Our students know nothing about what "strict writing" may mean (they don't really have classes in counterpoint, I am afraid).
> 
> When teaching my Schenker classes, I want my students to realize the link between strict and free writing that Schenker put at the basis of his approach. But I realize that they are not at all aware of what that might mean.
> 
> To sum up: what is the point, today, of teaching tonal music as if it where "real music"? Shouldn't we teach our students what the difference between strict and free ("real"?) writing meant in former times?
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Nicolas Meeùs
> Université Paris-Sorbonne
> http://nicolas.meeus.free.fr
> http://heinrichschenker.wordpress.com
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