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Le 17/01/2013 16:51, Victor grauer a écrit :<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:554249.14081.bm@smtp101.vzn.mail.bf1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">You are of course right, Nicolas. Linear continuity
and goal directedness are characteristic of many musical
traditions, not only the Western liturical-classical tradition. </blockquote>
Linear continuity and goal directedness ain't at all the same thing!
I would consider goal directedness (teleology) as a defining
characteristic of "modality". Linear continuity may well be a much
wider phenomenon.<br>
Medieval hocket (and your own examples in your figures
12.5-12.8) appear to me a game of apparently destroying an inherent
continuity, by a disruptive distribution among the voices; the
overall effect remains highly continuous ("fluent"), only the
singers themselve can easily become aware of the disruption. This is
very much the case with <i>Amor potest</i>: you are careful enough
to quote only mes 16 sqq., when the hocket begins, but the mes.
before clearly consisted in "lines between the voices", making it
clear that there were two pitch strands (say, one around F and the
other aroung C a 4th below) to be distributed among the singers. You
claim that Pygmies and Bushmen sing "highly disjunct motives"; but
how can you be sure that they do not realize how highly conjunct the
overall result is? Are you so certain that counterpoint in the
West, especially in "free writing", "involves continuous melodic
lines", rather than continuous overall situations?<br>
<br>
It seems rather difficult to ascertain whether melodic fluency, in
these case, is not merely trivial. A succession of disjunct
intervals, fanfare-like, appears almost bound to produce apparent
linear melodies. This is inherent to the restricted number of
degrees in any diatonic-like (or inherently consonant) system. How
can you be sure that these highly disjunct counterpoints that you
describe are not a game to hide or disguise an overall, resulting
linear continuity?<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<br>
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