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Some harmony exercises from an old music notebook. They belong to an elementary level course and deal with simple Renaissance harmony, so I thought they could be interesting and amusing to do for beginners here (of course, harmonizations in more advanced styles could be done). The exercises are actual Renaissance villancicos from Spanish cancioneros. We were given the top line and were asked to complete a four part harmony following rules from the Renaissance era (if you are not familiar with Renaissance harmony and want to try that style, I can give you some guidelines and pointers). The scores are available (you might need to transcribe some of them from the Renaissance notation, though), but do not cheat and write your own solution. The second song (Alta estava la peña) is transposed one octave up to fit a soprano range. I can provide rough translations of the villancicos if you want, but here is the gist of each song: 1. Soy serranica: It is about a rustic mountain girl who is feeling unlucky and miserable because of unsatisfied sexual appetite. 2. Alta estava la peña: About some plants and flowers that grow on a towering rock formation by a river. 3. Lo que demanda el romero: About a dude who is refused something he wants at the gate of his lover. (the full lyrics are missing for this song). The general structure of the villancicos is ABBA, ABBA, and so forth. I can't seem to be able to attach the score here, but here is the link to the pdf: https://app.box.com/s/rafmotbbpqk56r9h08fm I have some more of those exercises in my notebook, if you are interested. Enjoy!

Yes, typically a 7th in a dominant 7th chord resolves down a half step to the 3rd of the tonic. But yes! the 7th can also partially resolve down a half step to another dominant 7th. Consider Sophisticated Lady by Duke Ellington where the succession of unresolved seventh chords becomes a circle of fifths until the final V-1 progression, where the ending tonic chord is a Major 7th chord (1,3,5,natural 7). You might hear this hidden in Wagner's chromaticism. But it's used all the time in Jazz, cuz jazz has its own rules, one of which is you can precede any chord by stepping up or down to it chromatically. Good question. ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqxEdwsTQs

As far as arrangement is concerned, I defer to the experts in this field.