[Smt-talk] Palestrina and Jeppesen, was: MISSING THEORY COMPONENT?

[Olli Väisälä]

> I always found it ironic that Palestrina is the model for general  
> principles of melody writing. This has been the case since  
> Jeppesen, a scholar who admired Palestrina's tunes for their  
> Wagnerian qualities, and who had no idea how counterpoint works.
>

Dear Prof. Schubert,

Your harsh verdict of Jeppesen ("no idea") would be more productive,  
if you took the trouble of substantiating it.
>
>
> I would like to be a fly on the wall of the present-day  
> counterpoint classrooms where this type of writing is taught—is it  
> just recycled Jeppesen? It's for sure not any historical source: no  
> treatise in the Renaissance addresses "good melody writing" (except  
> for the most obvious errors). Palestrina, like everybody else,  
> stole, modeled, recycled, and wrote brilliant tunes, but there was  
> no theory of melody in his day.
>

I think Jeppesen was fully aware that there was no such theory in  
Palestrina's day. But this certainly does not suffice to imply that  
we should not utilize Palestrina's music – or Jeppesen's ideas about  
it – in trying to approach principles of "good melody writing."

Best wishes,
Olli Väisälä
Sibelius Academy
University of the Arts, Helsinki
ovaisala at siba.fi


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