Brafil

Part of me just wants to find five or six subjects that go together and make something out of it but I'll stick to easier things first :) As Tokke said, I don't want to spend my whole life figuring out one single thing even if I'm just not capable of it.* A Jazz fugue also sounds interesting - but jazz doesn't quite have the concepts of consonance and dissonance that common practice music is built on. AFAIK 7th chords are the new triads, so they would have to be consonant. That means sevenths above the bass would be consonant, but on the other hand, why not seconds then? And fourths are more consonant than both so that would only leave a tritone as a possible dissonance but not by much compared to major 7ths and minor 2nds. Alternatively, 7th chords could be passing chords except at cadences, where they can stand on their own. How did you go on for your attempt at a fugue, Paranoid? I'm not an expert but it seems to me that fugues tend to "fall apart" more easily the more they depart from the strictest rules of harmony and counterpoint so it might be a challenge to bring that to work but that's exactly why I created this topic, to see what could be done to further push the CP rules. I think I'll get a bit more acquainted with all the nuances of the rules first. Then I can go on about breaking them. Bit of experimentation can't hurt anyway.

I personally don't believe either that music can convey very specific emotions by itself. It's mostly our previous experience with music that we relate to. I believe that many people find it easy to grasp tonal music is that it can be interpreted as the conflict between happy and sad, basically being built up by two consonant chords with a lot of decoration around them. More "modern" music usually doesn't have this distinction so I believe it's harder to get what the composer wants to say. If you are used to listening to any kind of music you will learn to understand it. It's an illusion. Take for example a piece in a minor key. If you play a bVII chord (dominant of relative major), it will sound happy simply because you expect to hear a III afterwards - the relative major chord. Even more, if you play a III chord in a major key it will destroy the sense of happiness or whatever you call it as you can guess that the next chord is the relative minor - the chord sounds minor in a way even though it's just a major triad. We're just used to so many pieces that modulate that way that we can expect what comes next (Well, a lot of us have been at some point I believe). Of course, it doesn't have to be that way and playing with the listeners' minds is very interesting to do. One question that begs my mind though: Why do most people hearing tonal music begin to associate a major triad with happiness and a minor one with sadness and not the other way around?

Hey fellow YCs, I've got a question begging me and I thought this was a good place to ask. What are the limits of counterpoint? By that I mean 18th century counterpoint, the one Bach and Beethoven knew of. I've been reading Fux but I know that his contemporaries used a freer style of counterpoint, especially regarding voice movement, counterpoint that evolved beyond Palestrina's style. The Art of the Fugue is certainly magnificent although I haven't yet looked at it closely. Especially Contrapunctus XIV. This piece is very likely an (actually unfinished) quadruple permutation fugue - that means it has four subjects and four voices and states one in each voice. This already makes it incredibly complex owing to the form and the quadruple counterpoint. Amazingly enough, one of the subjects' inversion fits in with the whole as well. Most of us also know of the finale of Mozart's 41st Symphony, the Jupiter - a Fugato consisting of five previously-stated themes in quintuple counterpoint. One thing that's obvious is though that there are limits. The five themes in Mozart's Jupiter Symphony are quite simple and obviously constructed to fit with each other, being not as melodic as Mozart usually is. Bach didn't have a lot of freedom left in constructing his subjects either. Five- and six-voice fugues are incredibly rare and contrapunctally very dense so many voices rest a lot and move very slowly - kind of like elephants ;) So, ultimately, how far could one go? Would it be possible to write a quintuple, even a sextuple permutation fugue and who would be able to do so? What about a fugue subject that goes with its inversion, its retrograde and its retrograde-inversion in fully invertible counterpoint? I haven't had a closer look yet due to my lack of knowledge, but is it mathematically possible to construct such a subject of reasonable length considering all CP rules (regarding dissonances and invertible counterpoint especially) that does that? Is there anything left out there that surpasses Bach's AoF or Musical Offering in sheer complexity? Just curious.

Some of my favourites: Just because it's tonal doesn't mean it's boring and old-fashioned. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's rubbish. On the other hand, just because I can't understand it doesn't mean I'm insufficiently intelligent. Maybe your piece is. The times where there were still rules in music are long past. Nevertheless, there still are guidelines which you should follow. Ignoring all rules of counterpoint just because your Minuet is "Neo-Baroque" isn't a good excuse.

Hmm... SSC, just a question or two. Assuming you want to write "standard" tonal music, wouldn't knowing how certain chord progressions sound be helpful? If you want to attempt something outside of common I-V-I schemes the ability to hear in your head where the music is going harmonically seems quite important for me (unless you have access to a piano or something). I wonder if Beethoven etc. could even "hear" new chord progressions in their head? I haven't analysed any late Beethoven yet so I wonder if and how his harmonic language evolved during his last years of deafness. (Arpeggiating chords in my head only leaves a very weak impression of this in my mind but it might just be my lack of practice.) I have also got the feeling that coming up with decent melodies should be easier if you're familiar with all intervals. By decent I mean melodies that don't consist of wholly diatonic stepwise movement because these are the easiest to come up with - a memorable melody like some of the ones Schubert came up with seem a lot more complicated than that (D 959, Scherzo anyone?), especially if it tonicises a different key or modulates . I don't count the famous Ode to Joy because however famous it is, the melody itself isn't very special, which is not to say the 9th Symphony isn't amazing overall. Finally, a good short-term musical memory seems useful to me. I can usually improvise endlessly in my head or on an instrument and it sounds good, but writing it down seems more difficult to me - I've got the feeling my memory makes me forget the last few seconds so fast that I don't pay any particular attention to phrasing or that I just forget parts of the music because I'm not fast enough with my pen. These are all things that can be trained, but alas, I haven't even started any studies as a composer yet and these are all abilities I'd see as important from an instrumentalist's point of view.

Just to draw your attention to this (I don't think this has been mentioned), apparently some emotions are more universally detected in certain types of music. I know the article is a bit biased concerning this topic, but the basic facts about the experiment described are true. The explanation that some aspects of Western CP music imitate speech patterns would be quite logical IMO especially if you count in the theory that our sense for music developed through our sense of language from an evolutional point of view. Although as far as I know African language families are quite distinct from European ones as they split up a significant amount of time ago. Makes it even more interesting, doesn't it?