[Smt-talk] Scale degrees

[Vasili Byros]

Dear Nick,

The following are just two examples from the first half of the century, of French and German provenance respectively:

1) Dandrieu's Principes de l'accompagnement du clavecin from 1719 (also the first treatise, I believe, to use the term soudominante for scale degree 4). 
2) The so-called Kayser copy of the Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I), which features analytic annotations of a couple fugues and a prelude; the annotations include scale-degree analyses of the bass. For a discussion in English, see Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century (1992), 82–85. The Kayser manuscript dates from 1722–23.

Dandrieu uses names (for example, soufinale for the leading tone). The Kayser uses numbers.

All best,
Vasili

••••••••••••••••••

Vasili Byros
Assistant Professor, Music Theory and Cognition
Northwestern University
Bienen School of Music
711 Elgin Road
Evanston, IL 60208
v-byros at northwestern.edu



On May 15, 2014, at 9:11 AM, <nick at baragwanath.com> wrote:

> Dear List,
> 
> does anyone know who was the first theorist to number the scale (especially in the bass) from 1 to 7?
> 
> This is a mainstay of partimento rules, as in ‘add a 3rd and a 5th to the FIRST of the scale, add a 3rd and a 6th to the SECOND of the scale, etc.’  It remains fundamental to modern approaches to tonality.
> 
> Although a seven-note scale is implicit in the modal system, in counting intervals in counterpoint, and in the French seven-note solfa system, I have not been able to find any occurrences earlier than about 1750. Numbered scales are commonly found in late 18th-century sources, such as Fenaroli (1775), Paisiello (1782), Azopardi (1786), and of course Vogler. But neither A. Scarlatti nor Durante numbered the notes of the scale. They used a Guidonian system which is incompatible with the notion of seven scale degrees.
> 
> Could scale degrees be a late 18th-century invention?
> Private responses are welcome.
> 
> Nick Baragwanath
> Associate Professor in Music
> University of Nottingham
> University Park,
> Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
> nicholas.baragwanath at nottingham.ac.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
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