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<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"> <font face="Calibri">It
occurred </font>to me also that some of Catel's notation can be
found in CPE Bach – with important differences, though. CPE's 4+
is a 4 with an extended horizontal line and a stripe crossing it.
Catel writes +4, or even such combinations as +/2 (meaning +4/2)
or +/4/3 (obviously for +6/4/3). Both CPE and Catel use 2 alone to
refer to the third inversion of a seventh which is not a dominant.
For the diminished 5th, CPE writes 5b; barred figures for him
usually indicate raised intervals and his 4+ may be a mere barred
(i.e. raised) 4. (On the other hand my cursory glance through the
<i>Versuch</i> did not allow me to find a barred 5). For Catel, on
the other hand, a barred figure is a diminished interval.<br>
I believe that Catel's intention was to specifically indicate
one or the other note of the augmented 4th/diminished 5th
characteristic of the dominant, by either a + or a barred 5. This
was never stated, that I know, neither by him nor by his
followers; but the Paris Conservatoire makes such a point to
distinguish the "natural" (dominant) seventh from any other
("septièmes d'espèce") that the intention, conscious or not, seems
unescapable.<br>
<br>
Writing harmony in open score and C clefs (more precisely, chiavi
naturali) was standard practice in the Conservatoire. We still did
that in the Brussels Conservatoire during my studies (hum! some
time ago...), working the basses and sopranos given at
late-19th-century final exams in the Paris Conservatoire. For us,
at least, voice-leading considerations were indeed paramount, but
boiled down to avoiding parallel or "hidden" fifths and octaves.
There was no question of melodic fluency (on the contrary: the
exercises often requested tricky voice movements). We did try
imitations (which the exercises often made possible). I always had
the feeling that our classes were not in harmony, but in some kind
of free tonal counterpoint, a counterpoint that reduced to
avoiding parallels (one never spoke of good or bad successions of
chords, my teacher and most of my colleagues students new nothing
of harmonic functions, nor even of Roman numerals).<br>
<br>
Nadia Boulanger's teaching of harmony does not seem very different
from that. I presume that she was able to turn to musical
advantage what in our case sounded musical nonsense. What we did
had no style at all, and was not meant to; but it did more than
earning us the right to be free, it also shew us how to be free
and really gave us a facility of writing. A lot is done today in
the Conservatoire to learn writing "in the style of", to write
pastiches "à la Fauré", "à la Debussy", "à la Messiaen", etc. This
may give the students the (false) impression of writing "real"
music, but certainly does not help understanding what the Masters
did (one does not write "à la Beethoven", that I know: it would be
too difficult).<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<br>
<br>
Le 11/02/2012 16:32, Donna Doyle a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:D74BD00E-856A-4D9B-A2ED-2BC78484A22D@att.net"
type="cite">
<div>As a former Boulanger student, overloaded these days with
teaching, I nevertheless make stabs at completing my
dissertation </div>
<div>on Boulanger's methods and their tradition. All the
materials I have that are associated with her (incl basses and
figures I copied from her sheets and my realizations approved
by her), show the Conservatoire's figured bass tradition, e.
g., 4+, without the 2,<i> </i></div>
<div>for V4/2. I believe this notation comes not only from
Catel, as you point out, Nicholas, but from CPE. As Phil
Duker offered, </div>
<div>CPE lists several figures for this disposition (p 252).
Indeed, on p 260 CPE reminds readers that 4+ is an abbreviated
6/4/2.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>NB also used 7 over + for V7, 6 over barred 5 for 6/5 and
only +6 for 4/3. The leading-tone chord was considered a </div>
<div>"dominant FO" (fundamental omitted). She used few
romans. Voice-leading was paramount. She insisted on </div>
<div>realizations written in open score, C clefs, and played
for her. (And the performance had better be musical or she </div>
<div>would jump in her chair. ["But, my dear! Zhe poor
tenor!"]) She delighted in various realizations, especially
those </div>
<div>employing imitation and little canons between the
voices--techniques of her oral tradition. And, of course, </div>
<div>this was done in conjunction with intense ear training,
enabling us to see what we hear and hear what we see.</div>
<div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>For Boulanger, as with CPE, bass realization was an
aspect of Accompaniment. It seems to me that our
insistence on elegantly </div>
<div>logical numbering systems is defying the rich,
sometimes messy nature of this once
vibrant practice. Apart from Schenkerian analysis, figured
bass is a chord-labeling shadow of its former self.
Let's restore its life! (Perhaps not for undergraduates, </div>
<div>but in graduate curricula, for composers, theorists,
organists, maybe also pianists and conductors.) As NB
said, "It's not </div>
<div>that you're going to write in this style. But after
working with it, you'll have earned the right to be free."
Isn't this what composers/theorists/performers used to do?
I find it remarkable that NB, despite being called "French
provincial," </div>
<div>continued to transmit this tradition into the 1970s.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Donna Doyle</div>
<div>Queens College CUNY</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>
<div>On Feb 9, 2012, at 3:40 AM, Nicolas Meeùs wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <font
face="Calibri">The French tradition, that of the
Paris Conservatoire, is to write +4 in this
case, the + meaning that the 4 is the leading
tone (similarly, one would write +6 in second
inversion). This tradition, which is not mine
and against which I am trying to fight in Paris,
has several drawbacks, one of them being that
the French use labels that hardly anyone else
understands.<br>
I wondered about the origin of this
figuring, without performing a thorough
research. It certainly goes back to Catel's
treatise, and perhaps earlier. The + sign is in
origin merely a stylized #. Catel makes use of
it (and of the barred 5) with the specific
(although unstated) intention of specially
labeling dominant seventh chords, the ones that
he considers "natural", all positions of which
always have either a + or a barred 5 (from
fundamental position to third inversion: +3;
6/5barred; +6, +4; this is tricky, because 4/3
becomes +6, 2 or 4/2 becomes +4). Applied
dominants are labeled in the same way, with the
other perverse effect that French students see
modulations everywhere (as the French did since
François Campion in 1716: <i>tout diese
extraordinaire fait sortir du ton</i>, "any
accidental sharp leads outside the tonality").<br>
Labeling third-inversion dominants as V4/2
may result from an attempt to reconcile the two
systems. In this respect, I'd be pleased to know
how Nadia Boulanger labeled chords, if anyone on
this list knows (it has been discussed here some
time ago that her teaching of harmony followed
the tradition of the Conservatoire, but her
ciphering was not specifically discussed, that I
remember).<br>
<br>
My own view about the labeling of seventh chords
is that it should indicate the dissonant
interval: (8)/7, 6/5, 4/3, 2/(0), the 8 and 0
being omitted as redundant with the written
bass, of course; this is what Dimitar describes,
with a slightly different explanation. The main
difference with the French system is that it
does not specifically indicate <u>dominant</u>
sevenths, which may be viewed (by the French) as
a shortcoming, or (by the others) as an
advantage.<br>
<br>
</font>Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<br>
<br>
Le 9/02/2012 04:50, Ninov, Dimitar N a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:863F27D9B562F4429B340BA70B1F0169010A557C8CF9@BOBCATMAIL3.matrix.txstate.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear Colleagues,
My students were asking me why I wrote V2 instead of V4/2. I guess I had to ask them why they wrote V4/2 instead of V2. This is not a big deal, of course, but I wanted to bring to your attention the fact that number 4 is irrelevant to the logic of derivation of the abbreviated labels of seventh chords.
The abbreviated labels are derived by two intervals: 1) the interval between the bass and the root on the one hand, and 2) the interval between the bass and the seventh on the other. Thus in root position the only number is 7, because the interval between the bass and the root is unison; in first inversion we have 6-5; in second inversion 4-3, and in third inversion the only number is 2, because the interval between the bass and the seventh is unison.
Why 4? It shows the interval between the bass and the third of the seventh chord, which does not have to be shown unless we work in minor and use only figured bass with no Roman numerals.
When I flip through the pages of some European and older American books of harmony (as well as some relatively new) the above explanation is provided. Author such as Piston, Tischler, Schoenberg, Horvitt, Cook, and all Russian theorists use 2 instead of 4/2, but the massive tendency in the US is to write 4-2. Is this tradition based on ignoring the logic of derivation, or is there something special that stands behind this label?
I would appreciate any ideas in this regard.
Best wishes,
Dimitar
Dr. Dimitar Ninov, Lecturer
School of Music
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, Texas 78666
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