[Smt-talk] Scale degrees

Fri May 16 14:35:08 PDT 2014

Since we are all getting back into the friendly theory mode, I must share with you my amusement at the question of scales. Most jazz and pop players read from fake books and real books that rarely venture past three flats or sharps, and so it is with much of classical music as well. I believe Mozart is a good example. 

Some keys just have not been that popular. I challenge the gang to come up with standard repertoire pieces that are in F# major aside from a death-defying symphony by Mahler, a nocturne and barcarolle by Chopin, a romance by Schumann, and a sonata by Scriabin and Scarlatti, and a book called Anthology of Horror in F-sharp Major by Rene David Rivero. And, yes, I didn’t forget the WTC which stands alone in the history of music for way too many reasons and may prove that Bach was an extra-terrestrial.

Dr. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.
Music Department Chair
The City College of New York
Shepard Hall Room 72
New York NY 10031
(212) 650-7663
music at ccny.cuny.edu

America's Greatest Chair 
in the low-priced field

On May 16, 2014, at 2:16 PM, joellester at aol.com wrote:

> Dear all, 
> 
> In terms of F. Campion writing out the rule of the octave in all 24 keys, I think it also pays to keep in mind that the very existence of twelve major and twelve minor keys was a rather new idea as late as the 1710s (as I have chronicled in "Between Modes and Keys"), even in those regions of Europe that no longer spoke about "modern music" in terms of the ecclesiastical modes (in any forms).  During the past 2-1/2 centuries, children first learning about music are taught that there are two types of keys and each can begin on any of the 12 notes of the chromatic octave.  But a generation before that, such a notion was quite new and un-tested in its practical utility.  (The acrimonious letter exchange between Fux and Mattheson written in 1717-18 is surely not the only such dispute that happened in that period; we know of it only because Mattheson published the letters in 1725.  We may think of Fux primarily as the author of "Gradus ad parnassum," but he was also a composer of operas and other music in the latest styles . . . making it even more astonishing that he denied the very existence of the major and minor keys in the late 1710s.) 
> 
> Remember also that F. Campion was a guitarist.  We should keep in mind that on the keyboard, the hands can just go up by half-steps as we transpose progressions in major or minor keys; but on the guitar, the hands will take quite different positions as different keys lie differently in relation to open strings, etc.  (This relates to the recent thread about using keyboards vs. other instruments when teaching theory.) 
> 
> Joel Lester
> Bronx, New York
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Grazzini <steve.grazzini at gmail.com>
> To: Nicolas Meeùs <nicolas.meeus at scarlet.be>
> Cc: Vasili Byros <vasili.byros at aya.yale.edu>; smt-talk Talk <smt-talk at societymusictheory.org>
> Sent: Fri, May 16, 2014 8:34 am
> Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Scale degrees
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> As Nicolas points out, it's interesting that Campion would have felt compelled to write out the rule of the octave in every key. Perhaps this even suggests that French musicians of the period weren't yet accustomed to thinking in terns of scale degrees. However, Campion does occasionally describe the bass in terms of ordinal scale degrees. For instance, he says that the #4 chord is only used on "la quatriéme du ton." At one point he gives the full rule of the octave in the same terms (1716, 20–21), saying that in a major key, "la premiere du ton" takes the major third, fifth, and octave; the "seconde" takes the minor third, fourth, and the major sixth; and so on, just as in the partimento rules that Nick mentioned in the original posting.
> 
> Similar rules appear in the manuscript "Règles d'acompagnement" of Clérambault, which are also dated 1716. Here Clérambault sometimes uses the expression "degré du mode" in roughly the same way that we are using "scale degree." And although Dandrieu seems to prefer to call the notes of the scale "finale," "sufinale," and so on, he defines those terms by referring to the "premiere note d'un mode," etc.
> 
> Even if the ordinal names for scale degrees were commonly used in France by 1720, it's worth noting that Gervais (1733) still hasn't quite caught on, and numbers the descending scale backwards, with 1 for the upper tonic, 2 for the leading tone -- all the way down to 8 for the lower tonic!
> 
> With best wishes,
> 
> Steve Grazzini
> Bloomington, Indiana
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Nicolas Meeùs <nicolas.meeus at scarlet.be> wrote:
> Dear Nick, Vasili, and all,
> 
> Dandrieu indeed gives a figure where the degrees of the C scale are numbered 1, b2 (or b9), n2 (or n9), b3 (or #2), n3, 4, #4 (or b5), 5, b6 (or #5), 6 (or b7 [sic]), b7, n7 and 8 (where 'n' stands for natural). This is an isolated and therefore most interesting case in France at this time. It is not entirely clear, however, whether these figures possibly refer to bass notes (b9, n9 and #2, particularly, are somewhat troublesome in this respect). 
> 
> Dandrieu also appears one of the firsts, probably the first, to use the term soudominante, which was not very common in the first half of the 18th century and which even Fétis did not use more than a century later (Fétis said "the 4th degree of the scale"!).
> 
> François Campion, describing the règle de l'octave, for which bass numbers would have been quite convenient, fell compelled to notate it in twelve transpositions, in major and in minor, i.e. two times twelve almost identical staves (but for the transposition) and never thought of numbering the degrees.
> 
> Quirinus Van Blankenburg, who published his Elementa musica in Dutch in 1739, derided French theory in general and François Campion in particular, saying:
> zal men de namen der schale nomberen en zeggen met Campion blz. 22 dat N. 1 zal hebben een 3 en 5, N. 2 een 6, enz.[?]
> Shall one number the degrees of the scales and say with Campion p. 22 that n. 1 shall have a 3 and a 5, n. 2 a 6, etc.?
> This, to me, was until now the first clear European reference to a numbering of the bass degrees. I did not pay enough attention to the Kayser manuscript, as quoted by Lester, and I will do so as soon as possible.
> 
> 
> 
> Le 15/05/2014 21:34, Vasili Byros a écrit :
>> 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
>> 
> 
> 
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> Steve Grazzini
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