[Smt-talk] harmonic and melodic scales

[Ildar Khannanov]

Dear Dr. Cohn and the List,

done deal! I think I know where to look. It is not easy, because the Soviet Government divided archival materials, all that are 1918 or later are placed in RGALI and TsGALI, and the earlier ones are spread through several sources. In the summer I will dig for the minor subdominant in 1830-40. It would be interesting for Russian theorists as well. I doubt that they know much about this, especially Weizmann's visit. But, as I already mentioned, there were texts in the late 17th century (Diletsky and, earlier, Mesenetz) which could have useful information. And in the 18th century, there were some sources of interest for this topic.

Best wishes,

Ildar Khannanov
Peabody Conservatory
solfeggio7 at yahoo.com



On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 6:16 PM, Richard Cohn <richard.cohn at yale.edu> wrote:
  
Thomas Noll's note, copied below, prompts me to add that Carl Freidrich Weitzmann's writings, beginning with the 1853 monograph on the Augmented Triad (same year as Hauptmann's Natur), also position the minor subdominant close to the center of his harmonic universe. As Weitzmann was a student of Hauptmann around 1830, he may simply have learned about the minor subdominant from his teacher and passed it along two decades later. But I'm not so sure: CFW and MH had radically different views on other matters, esp. tuning and enharmonicism.  

Weitzmann's emphasis on the minor subdominant, and the major scales that host it,  may ultimately lead back to Russia. As I noted in a footnote to my 2000 MT Spectrum article on "Weitzmann's Regions," Weitzmann spent an extended period during the 1830's and 40's performing in the opera orchestra in St. Petersburg.  

Now here's an interesting research topic for a music theorist fluent in Russian and with an archivist's itch. What documentary evidence is there of Weitzmann's time in Russia? What music was he exposed to (Glinka surely; who else?)? What music theory did he learn there, and what did he bring back with him? I would love to know the answers to these questions, am unlikely to learn Russian, and have no archivist's itch, so I am hoping that someone else might take up this topic.  

--Rick Cohn
Battell Professor of Music Theory
Yale University
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2013 18:13:29 +0100
From: Thomas Noll <noll at cs.tu-berlin.de>
To: Ildar Khannanov <solfeggio7 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Ninov, Dimitar N" <dn16 at txstate.edu>,
        "smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org"
        <smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org>
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Harmonic and Melodic Scales
Message-ID: <83302DD3-5486-4128-8DB2-3B426BA4F8E2 at cs.tu-berlin.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Dear Ildar,

> Why in the West minor subdominant in major has been underrated?

Has it? This at least not true for Leipzig (where I was born). Moritz Hauptmann's (1853) influential book "Die Natur der Harmonik und der Metrik: zur Theorie der Musik"  spends considerable attention to the study of the "Moll-Dur-Tonart" quite in balance to the study of the "Moll-Tonart". This book predates Rimsky-Korsakov's (1886) ???????????? ??????? ???????? by 33 years. In think, Hauptmann's thoughts are particularly valuable for the understanding of diatonicity in connection with alteration. This issue had been addressed by Dimitar and by Nicolas in recent mails.
Sincerely
Thomas Noll


*********************************************************
Thomas Noll
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~noll
noll at cs.tu-berlin.de
Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya, Barcelona
Departament de Teoria i Composici?

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