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Dear Giorgio, Ildar, and others interested in the subdominant,</div>
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just to add to the mix, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out that nineteenth-century Neapolitan textbooks describe the bass progression I-IV-V-I as "La prima lezione di contrappunto". They provide pages of examples showing how students would realise this bass at the keyboard in an astonishing variety of ways. It was also called the "cadenza de' tuoni naturali" because it was understood to contain the three fundamentals of the scale. Tartini called it the "cadenza mista" or mixed cadence, because it seemed to him to mix plagal and perfect.</div>
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Unless nineteenth-century maestros invented this "first lesson of counterpoint", which seems unlikely, it must have belonged to earlier practices. It suggests that the pre-dominant function of IV was instilled in Italian musicians from an early age.</div>
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Nick Baragwanath</div>
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University of Nottingham</div>
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