<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">This point is well-taken, that "we can see composers becoming increasingly aware of the harmonic dimension." <div><div>But why have we created a chords-as-objects vs chords-as-byproducts-of melodic-motion dichotomy? I think </div><div>Mark Anson-Cartwright's passage exemplifies a both/and solution: Bach give us a perfect balance between </div><div>the contrapuntal and the harmonic. Unfortunately, not all composers after him walked that balance beam.</div><div>And this is a reason why many young jazz composers come to me for private counterpoint lessons--they've</div><div>learned all there is about jazz harmony and now crave the skill to negotiate the voices that jazz traditionally</div><div>leaves up to improv.</div><div><br></div><div><div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Donna Doyle</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Aaron Copland School of Music</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Queens College</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">65-30 Kissena Blvd.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Flushing, NY 11367</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px">______________________</p> </div> </div><br><div><div>On Jul 13, 2010, at 9:17 AM, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Let me say one more thing about the Josquin example I passed on.<br><br>Many people have suggested (both publicly and privately) that the F is an accented passing tone, and indeed the context seems to support that reading. However, it is worth pointing out that theorists often prohibit parallel fifths, even when one of the notes is a passing tone. That is, in Renaissance counterpoint, (C4, G4)->(Bb3, F4)->(A3, F4) is often illegal, even though the Bb can be described as a passing tone. (My sense is that the underlying progression is pretty rare in the Renaissance.)<br><br>One issue here is whether it makes sense, in a Renaissance context, to speak of a "dissonant perfect fifth." Or for that matter, a "nonstructural perfect fifth." Perhaps it is more accurate to say we have two consecutive perfect fifths, which are by definition consonant.<br><br>The issues are subtle, and it's worth treading carefully; there are a variety of ways of understanding the passage. I myself favor an explanation that says: the passage is totally fine because the voices do not move in parallel; for Josquin, perhaps, the prohibition on parallel fifths was a prohibition on a certain kind of motion (voices actually moving in parallel), and not on a certain kind of harmonic state (two fifths in succession).<br><br>Why do I care about this?<br><br>I am interested in the thought that the conception of "forbidden parallels" evolved over time. I like the idea that earlier composers were more focused on a specific type of motion, while later composers were more focused on a general harmonic situation. It helps explain phenomena that I've noticed before -- for instance, that Palestrina and Lassus will permit parallel-ish things that later composers generally avoid, or that Bach will sometimes get out of parallels in a cheap way, as if reverting to the older conception in a pinch.<br><br>What particularly interests me here is the thought that it's another way in which we can see composers becoming increasingly aware of the harmonic dimension of music; usually, we understand this as a matter of becoming more aware of chords and how they move. (That is, the growing tendency to think of chords as objects that progress in certain specific ways, rather than being byproducts of melodic motion.) But it's interesting to see a similar phenomenon occurring in the treatment of antiparallel and contrary-motion fifths. Here the harmonic perspective leads to an increased sensitivity to these pseudo-parallels.<br><br>Pedagogically, this leads to differences of opinion between theorists like Schenker (who reject antiparallel fifths, and to that extent are more "harmonic" in their approach) and Lewin (who, as Ed Gollin reminded me, permitted antiparallels, and to that extent is more "linear").<br><br>DT<br><br>Dmitri Tymoczko<br>Associate Professor of Music<br>310 Woolworth Center<br>Princeton, NJ 08544-1007<br>(609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)<br><a href="http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri">http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri</a><br><br><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Smt-talk mailing list<br>Smt-talk@societymusictheory.org<br>http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></body></html>