<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Nicolas,<div>many thanks for this very clarifying answer and thank you also for your earlier pointing at the conceptual link between the subdominant as a scale degree below the dominant and the predominant. In a Schenkerian perspective the root 4^ of a predominant IV (as well as the real bass of a predominant II6) will be linearly interpreted as an (incomplete) neighbor to the root 5^ of a root position V, which then highlights the neighboring position to 5^ and suppresses the other meaning of being a fourth above 1^. It is really interesting to see, how the two competing paradigmatic meanings of sous-dominant split the the music-theoretical discourse into two traditions of reasoning about harmony. This might indicate, that we should still gain more insights from the possibility as such to have these competing paradigms.</div><div>Sincerely</div><div>Thomas Noll </div><div><br><div><div>On 11.03.2012, at 14:37, Nicolas Meeùs wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<font face="Calibri">Dear Thomas, dear colleagues,<br>
My answers are between quotations from your message:</font><br>
<blockquote cite="mid:7B64C0E2-9FA2-4DEA-886D-A4669348D1F4@cs.tu-berlin.de" type="cite">
<div>(1) The two meanings:
<div>[...]</div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">
<div>
<div>Joel Lester (1994) writes in "Compositional
Theory in the Eighteenth Century" (p. 132) the
following:</div>
<div>"In the Nouveau systéme, Rameau adopts the
name subdominant (<i>sous-dominant</i>);
apparently coined as <i>soudominante</i> in
Dandrieu c. 1719) to refer to scale step 4 as
well as to the added sixth chord build there.
Whereas Jean-Françiios Dandrieu (c. 1682 -
1738) probably intended the prefix <i>sub </i>to
refer to the note below the dominant, Rameau
denotes by that prefix that scale-step 4 lay a
fifth below the tonic, complementing the
dominant a fifth above the tonic. Just like
the dominant, the subdominant supports a
dissonant first chord of a cadence.</div>
</div>
</div>
</span></div>
</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
This is very true for the <i>Nouveau systême</i>. Yet, let me quote
from the Master thesis of my former student Anne-Emmanuelle
Ceulemans ("Les conceptions fonctionnelles de l'harmonie de J. Ph.
Rameau, Fr. J. Fétis, S. Sechter et H. Riemann", UCL, 1989) (my
English):<br>
<blockquote>Initially [i.e. in <i>Nouveau systême</i>], it is clear
that this subdominant was to be understood as the dominant under,
that which is symmetrical with respect to the upper dominant.
Rameau himself is nevertheless responsible for the erroneous
conception that one could have made of the subdominant as being
the note immediately under the dominant, as in his <i>Dissertation</i>
(p. 7) he introduces the term "sus-dominante" [superdominant] to
denote the note above the dominant, parallel to the subdominant.
In <i>Génération harmonique</i> he will make use also of the
concept of "sus-tonique" [supertonic] (p. 135 in the Jacobi
edition) and in the alphabetic table of terms that closes the
work, he defines the subdominant as follows:<br>
<blockquote>SOUDOMINANTE. C'est la quinte au-dessous, et par
Renversement la Quarte du Son principal, dit Note-Tonique, et
qui se trouve immédiatement au-dessous de la dominante dans
l'ordre Diatonique.<br>
[Subdominant. In is the fifth under, and by inversion the fourth
above the principal sound, said Note-Tonique, and which is found
immediately under the dominant in the diatonic order.]<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote cite="mid:7B64C0E2-9FA2-4DEA-886D-A4669348D1F4@cs.tu-berlin.de" type="cite">
<div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">
<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">
<div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">(2) The two
expressions:</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">Are the prefixes</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "><i>sou</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "> and</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "><i>sous-</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:
medium; "> the same or not? Could one
associate a semantic difference between the
two creations "soudominant" and
"sous-dominant"? "Something which is below
the Dominant" vs. "a Dominant which is below
something"?</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</span></div>
</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
A partial answer may be found in ancient French dictionaries, e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/dictionnaires-dautrefois">http://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/dictionnaires-dautrefois</a>,
which give the following information:<br>
– The term <i>sous-dominante</i> appears for the first time in the
6th edition (1835) of the <i>Dictionnaire de l'Académie française</i>;
it is not in the 5th edition (1798), nor in the 4th (1762), and most
certainly not in the previous editions. It was found, of course, in
specialized dictionaries, e.g. Rousseau.<br>
– Compound words beginning with <i>sous- </i>appear in in the 1st
edition (1694) of the <i>Dictionnaire </i>(sous-gouverneur,
sous-locataire, sous-sacristain, and the like) and in the following
ones.<br>
– The same edition also has compound words beginning with <i>sous</i>
without hyphen: sousbarbe, souschantre, sousdiacre, sousferme,
sousprieur (but sous-prieure, in the feminine), etc. It even
includes "sousrire", which in modern French became "sourire" (but
which lost its status of compound word). But these forms disappear
in later editions.<br>
– I found in the same edition (1694) only one single compound word
beginning with <i>sou</i>: souquenille.<br>
– The earlier form, documented only in Jean Nicot's <i>Thresor de
la langue francoyse</i> (1606) is <i>soub </i>(soubchantre,
soubgardien, etc.).<br>
<br>
I see no way in which a semantic difference could be made between <i>sou
</i>and <i>sous-</i>. In the case of "soudominante" vs
"sous-dominante", note that Rameau, in the quotation from <i>Génération
harmonique</i> above, uses "soudominante" apparently for both
acceptions, "something below the dominant" and "a dominant below
something". I have no inventory of the term in 19th-century French
texts, but it certainly is not used at all by Fétis.<br>
<br>
Yours,<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote></div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br><div><div>*********************************************************</div><div>Thomas Noll</div><div><a href="http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~noll">http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~noll</a></div><div><a href="mailto:noll@cs.tu-berlin.de">noll@cs.tu-berlin.de</a></div><div>Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya, Barcelona </div><div>Departament de Teoria i Composició </div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div>*********************************************************</div></div></div></div><div><br></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span>
</div>
<br></div></body></html>