Lesson with Voce (Modern Analysis, History, Counterpoint and Harmony)

Hi!

Are we all suppose to participate in the lesson giving/taking (you know, comments, suggestions, ideas...)??

... No, but if you have something particularly helpful you may say it. But the lessons are generally reserved for the student and teacher as to avoid any possible derailment.

Alright, as for your counterpoint thing, I think it's pretty Bach-sounding, save for a couple of details.

If this is a baroque style copy, we have to consider the affect associated with D major. In this case, it'd be a little out of character for a piece in D major as pieces in D major are generally more energetic or have a sort of "royal entry" feel to them, as if you'd play it when a king made an appearance or did anything.

I think that overall you kept it simple and kept the materials at a minimum without compromising diversity, which is a good thing.

Other than that, in 2 voice instrumental counterpoint you should avoid having octave intervals on strong beats or in long notes, same for 4ths and 5ths. It's better to have these intervals as passing intervals or in passing notes rather than accentuated.

The usage of articulation is pretty accurate, which is also a nice extra. If you didn't know, articulation was used as a replacement for dynamic in instruments which couldn't really make dynamic contrasts like violins or etc.

In the beginning of the piece I would recommend having a D in the beginning, as otherwise it sounds rather not in D major but in B minor. The thing is, the way you started is typical for when you have an off-beat start, generally if you start on accentuated beats you need to be able to tell what harmony is implied with clarity. The key doesn't need to be established directly at the beginning, but a cadence or cadence-like formation must come within the first few sections as to establish a tonal center.

But it's nitpicking, this is a good exercise, one I didn't ASK FOR but it's good. Well done.

lol I actually wrote this a while ago and never showed it to you.

zSHARE - passacaglia.mid

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.

I'll get right on it ASAP. :

If you're gonna be here anymore, lemme know. I know you've been busy lately, so yeah.

I will need moar time, sorry. I'm really tied up with stuff and I have a lot of other stuff I have to write first (in german) so it's hard. XD

Speaking of Handel's harpsichord suites. Now that you mention it, there IS a lot of very simple harmony in them, although there's the occasional ultra-contrapuntal movement here and there. I think it's really interesting how he takes simpler movements and very complex ones and puts them together in coherent works in the suites. (e.g. the fugue and presto from the 3rd suite, or the allemande and "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations from the 5th.)

Before going into the Threnody, I want to talk a little about modulations and key changes in general.

As we've already seen, there's certainly connection between both the form of a piece and the tonal regions it traverses. One of the key distinctions between the classic and the baroque period is that, despite the (anachronistically analyzed) harmony being more complex in the baroque period, the forms were simpler overall. If you were to ask a theorist back then in the 1700s, he would've said pieces are generally formed of two parts, the first being in the tonic, the second in the dominant.

Of course, the terms themselves tonic and dominant don't show up until the 1730s and for them to be used like we're using them now it took even longer. But in any case, though the form in the baroque is more complex than our imaginary theorist would like to believe, the focus here is on the emphasis in the tonal regions being corner stones and points of reference.

Until the romantic period (Schubert and late Beethoven) you don't generally see a piece go through tonal regions far from where it starts. This is evident in the pre-classic galante style pieces, as well as the Vienna classic, where you would generally work with the circle of 5ths as a guide to where you could modulate and where the piece could go. Most clear are modulations in the dominant region, the relatives (or parallels) and maybe even a mediant here and there.

Later what you get by them romantics is that your modulations are guided by 3rds rather than the typical circle of 5ths. This is also further enhanced by the fact that the harmonic context is overall richer, with the cadences becoming more elaborate (chromatic movement is also a factor, but not as extreme as it later is by Wagner, etc.) This all means that your modulations end up being sometimes towards rather far off keys than where you started or where you were, which requires sometimes simply changing the accidentals enharmonically if you were in a hurry.

So, with all this, we can separate modulation techniques in two groups. The first and what you see by just about everyone until the late romantics is called the diatonic modulation. It's rather straight forward, you use pivot chords which have both a function in the key you are in and in the key you are going to make your way towards the key you want. This can be directly (one pivot chord) if it's a key that is particularly near but it can also be in multiple steps if you want to go further or you want to take your time.

Since in the baroque people didn't concern themselves much with chords proper, the concept remained the same but the technique used was through sequencing. Sequencing has two types, however, and using both is necessary to ensure you get to where you want to get. The first type is a "tonal" sequence, where you don't REALLY copy the exact intervals and paste them on a different degree, but rather you adjust for accidentals and so on (ie, C D E -> D E F -> E F G.) The second is a "real" sequence, where you transpose the exact intervals (ie, C D E -> D E F# -> E F# G#.) Obviously by the second you'll come out of the key you were in rather quickly but by combining both you can pretty much reach any key you want to, so long as you're careful as to where you "get off" the sequence.

The other type of modulation is a chromatic modulation. This is when you simply go from one chord to the next in a chromatic fashion, either by changing accidentals enharmonically or by virtue of chromatic voice leading. In the late romantic period this type of modulation is very, very, common as around the famous Tristan chord the tendency was that you no longer needed to have a functional relationship to your "pivot" chord like you needed in diatonic modulations, but now it's legitimized to go from any chord to the next simply through voice leading principles.

An (extremely simple) example of diatonic modulation would be:

C major -> A minor:

C: T (Tp)

A: (T) s D T.

The A minor chord is the parallel (or VI) of C major, so it's very easy as it itself serves as the pivot chord we need. From then on, we just need to establish it with any type of cadence.

An example of chromatic (or also known as "free" modulation if you like) would be:

C major -> Ab major/minor

You can simply, through chromatic voice leading, make the G in the C major chord be the leading note to Ab. Yeah, it's that simple. What happens to the other voices is that they can either jump or move chromatically. This is often also coupled with suspensions, passing notes and so on. That's why the overall definition of "leading note" is not really tied to any specific harmonic rule, but that anything that moves in semitones can be considered a leading note.

But really, there are thousands of ways to modulate from one key to another and I'm just showing here the most basic ways.

An (extremely simple) example of diatonic modulation would be:

C major -> A minor:

C: T (Tp)

A: (T) s D T.

wat?

I said before that one of the prerequisites for a pivot chord is that it means something functional in both the key you're in and in the key you're going to. So, from C major to A minor, you can use an A minor chord as the pivot chord as it is functionally the VI of C major (or tonic parallel in function theory.) It is, obviously, also the T in the key we're going to (A minor,) so it's a rather great chord to use as pivot in this occasion if we're short on time and need to modulate real quick.

It's time for some threnody.

Well, this "analysis" won't be much of an analysis like what I did with the other pieces before because it just doesn't lend itself to looking at chords individually. Instead, I wanna explain what's going on with it as a whole and what's worthwhile paying attention to.

Background, context and where it stands in relation to everything else.

The piece is titled "Threnos, Den Opfern von Hiroschima f

k.

Remember a while ago, when you asked me "who do you want to emulate?", and I was all liek "no dood, I don't want to emulate anybody"....?

I still don't, as a regular style, but I DO want to do an exercise for string quartet in like...Bartok emulationz. o.O

kannst du mir helfennnnnn?

k.

Remember a while ago, when you asked me "who do you want to emulate?", and I was all liek "no dood, I don't want to emulate anybody"....?

I still don't, as a regular style, but I DO want to do an exercise for string quartet in like...Bartok emulationz. o.O

kannst du mir helfennnnnn?

Why of course.

Any particular quartet in mind?

yay :x

the 5th quartet? I actually have the score to that one, for once.

yay :x

the 5th quartet? I actually have the score to that one, for once.

K, I'll see what I can do to give you some pointers and stuff. :x

hai.

Gimme a couple of days, I'm really REALLY tied up right now.

Alright, so on to Bart