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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Dear all,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Perhaps I can add something here, having gone through the same undergraduate program in my time that Dmitri and Jonathan did in theirs, and teaching Paul Vidal’s basses for many years for that program. I also spent time in Fontainebleau and Paris at the end of Mlle. Boulanger’s life, studying with her and her circle.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>- Some of Mlle. Boulanger’s teaching materials derived from her training at the Paris Conservatoire. This includes the Vidal basses as well as an old-school text she gave her students, the <i>Traité d’harmonie</i> by Théodore Dubois, an early 20<sup>th</sup>-century Conservatoire product in line with its predecessors, written by one of its directors and master harmony teachers. Boulanger’s own harmony course was more modern; I may still have some materials.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>- While I agree with Jonathan that the Vidal basses do not foster awareness of rules or norms of harmonic progression in our sense, they do depend on clearly articulated rules of chord progression of another traditional kind. Most of these rules apply to short progressions of two or occasionally more chords, taking into consideration what precedes and follows. Progression types are identified by two elements: chord types (e.g. rt. pos., 1st inv., 2nd inv., dom. 7th, dim. 7th) and specific interval and direction of bass progression (e.g. semitone, whole tone, leap). Vidal’s exercises present each of these progression types repeatedly, in numerous changing contexts, in order for the student to be prepared for any situation (what Jonathan refers to as unpredictability). For each progression type one learns preferred voice leading patterns for the possible soprano choices along with a ranking of preferred and prohibited doublings, always in four parts. Lines resulting from the better soprano choices can sometimes become rote solutions, although they may not always be musically preferable as melodies. Scale degree of the bass may be considered, and is important in the case of specific exceptions to doublings, since most progression types occur in particular places in the key. In the Americanized version at least, bass progressions may be associated with specific harmonic progressions as a secondary consideration - e.g. 6/3 descending to 5/3 by semitone commonly indicates IV6 - V in minor. There are also stock patterns for tricky extended progressions such as stepwise series of sixth chords. Exercises are always to be realized at the keyboard, not written. It seems, to me, that there might be an echo of aspects of partimento practice in Vidal’s method.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>The number of progression types and voice leading and doubling rules, along with the constant awareness of context, can be daunting, although the end result is a practice of greater subtlety (and, to a detractor, rigidity, fussiness, and lack of analytic awareness) than what the typical North American harmony textbook recommends, particularly regarding triadic relations, which are the heart of the method. There are also copious basses containing seventh and ninth chords, suspensions, etc., but the presence of dissonance and additional tones restricts the voice leading and doubling possibilities, so that context and figuring out the chords becomes the prime focus. Chromaticism in Vidal can be stylistcally ecletic, Fauré-like. Overall, the approach mirrors Dubois somewhat. As keyboard exercises primarily, I don’t think that the basses would reliably yield the kind of insight re harmonic norms that Dmitri is seeking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>David Kopp<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Boston University<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>-----Original Message-----<br>From: smt-talk-bounces@lists.societymusictheory.org [mailto:smt-talk-bounces@lists.societymusictheory.org] On Behalf Of JONATHAN W BERNARD<br>Sent: Thursday, 16 December 2010 22:40<br>To: Dmitri Tymoczko<br>Cc: SMT Talk<br>Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Written record of Boulanger pedagogy?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Hello, Dmitri, and everyone,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Among the previously unpublished essays and lectures of Elliott Carter that I edited for the Rochester collection some years ago was his reminiscence of his three years under Boulanger's tutelage. It struck me at the time as odd that, despite the vast number of students she had over the years, I'd run across hardly any other published accounts by former pupils of the instruction they received. Carter's account is one of the most detailed -- but, as anyone knows who has ever read his essay, he has very little to say about the "nitty-gritty" of harmonic instruction or anything else. I'd be intrigued, to say the least, to learn that someone had made an attempt to set down the rules of harmony a la Boulanger. I can also think of several reasons why no such attempt might ever have been made, by anyone; but that's a different conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>One caution I'd like to offer here concerns the Vidal basses. Having spent untold hours of my freshman year in college plugging through page after page of these figured-bass exercises, under the tutelage myself of a Boulanger disciple, I have the distinct impression that Vidal designed these quite deliberately not to follow any known rules of harmonic progression. The whole point seemed to be to make progression unpredictable, forcing the student to learn to read the figures mechanically and accurately, to get them right at first sight without any contextual clues (such as what would "make sense" harmonically in a given situation). They are entirely artificial exercises: no upper parts are provided, as would of course be present for real continuo playing. Other veterans/victims of the Vidal regimen may disagree with this assessment; I'd love to hear from them either way.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Jonathan Bernard<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>University of Washington<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>On Fri, 10 Dec 2010, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Hi Everybody,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> I'm looking for written materials that record the nitty-gritty of harmony as <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> taught by Nadia Boulanger and associates: for instance, which tonal chord <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> progressions were common and which were rare, according to Boulanger? Which <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> tonal sequences were most common?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> There is a set of figured basses by Vidal, which she used in teaching, that I <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> guess provide some indirect evidence here. But I'm wondering if there's <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> anything more direct? Ideally I'm looking for something like "Nadia <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Boulanger's ideas about music, as written by Kostka and Payne."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> The reason is that (1) I would like to do some quantitative evaluation of the <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> ideas in this tradition, based on my own analytical data, and (2) that some <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> of what I've seen in Vidal interacts interestingly with my own ideas about <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> these issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Thanks,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> DT<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Dmitri Tymoczko<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Associate Professor of Music<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> 310 Woolworth Center<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> Princeton, NJ 08544-1007<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> (609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoPlainText><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>> http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>