<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><br></div><div>Dear Ildar,</div><div><br></div><div>By all means interfere. Unfortunately, it seems that you have completely misunderstood my position in several issues.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> </div> <div>What makes you think that "closure" and its synonim "prolongation" are the norms of music, and that they come directly out of musical intuition? </div> <div> </div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I only meant that harmonic closure—starting from I and coming through V back to I—is an important phenomenon in classical tonal music. Do we disagree in this?</div><div><br></div><div>Closure is not synonymous with prolongation, but what I said is that closed tonic-to-tonic progressions may be treated prolongationally by assigning them the role of tonic in larger progressions.</div><div><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div>Cadence is an important device, but is it the goal and essence of music?</div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Here, at least, we seem to agree.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> </div> <div>A product of real musical intuition is the sense of tension and resolution. [...]. However, in your "prolongation" the role of the chord which creates tension and requires resolution is reduced to almost nothing. It looses its harmonic function, becomes a "contrapuntal chord" or Nebenakkord. The most important agency is being reduced, the most important event--overlooked. By the way, you cannot not notice it while listening to it, but it is possible to "reduce" it in visual analysis.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I am afraid you have misunderstood what "reduction" means in prolongational analysis. If we say that a I–V4/3–I6 progression prolongs the tonic, it tells that the progression as a whole may represent the tonic in larger contexts but this <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"> in no sense cancels or diminishes or overlooks the significance of V4/3 as an element of tension within this progression</span>. Rather, prolongational analysis models one aspect of this tension, since prolongational weight tends to correlate with stability (= lack of tension).</div><div><br></div><div>(Lerdahl and Jackendoff expressly identify there concept of prolongation as a model of tension and release, but I think the issue is actually somewhat more complex and nuanced than what their treatises indicate.)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> </div> <div>A very common example, which is used to demonstrate the validty of "prolongation," is the voice exchange progression. And you would say that it has a "passing 6/4 chord in the middle." What is the function of this middle chord: "Passing." How about passing Dominant 6/4? Or the fact that it is the Dominant is unimportant?</div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Why would the dominant be unimportant? I certainly have not written anything to imply such a view.</div><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,</div><div>Olli Väisälä</div></div></body></html>