Dear Colleagues:<br><br>I find when instructing undergraduates in core
harmony courses that students accept the guidelines we provide for
part-writing much better if they understand the reasoning behind them.
I'm at a loss, however, to explain why common-practice composers rarely
used a 6/4 chord above scale degree 2 as a bass neighbor motion
expanding tonic. V4/3 is most often a passing bass gesture (in which, of
course, there's a good reason why students need not resolve the chordal
seventh in the soprano - namely, it's not a dissonance with the bass
and often completes a pleasing parallel-tenths idiom) or part of a
collection of dominant-functioned chords, though it can and does
function as a bass neighbor expanding tonic; and vii 6 an vii 6/5
harmonize bass neighbor notes with much more frequency than a 6/4 chord.<br>
<br>I'd be interested if there are any compelling contrapuntal or
harmonic reasons why composers tended not to harmonize neighbor motions
in the bass with unaccented 6/4 chords.<br><br>Best,<br><br>Matt<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>________________________________<br><br>Matthew Bribitzer-Stull<br>Associate Professor of Music Theory<br>University of Minnesota School of Music<br>
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