Every Note Justified Of A Progression Of My Own

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What?

Chris, that's fantastic, though I confess you lost me more than once.

Is it possible that having a reason for every note you write can simply mean that, of all the notes at your disposal, it was the note that sounded best in that particular spot? Unless I'm missing something, if you have to do an analysis like this for every decision you make as a composer, you're not going to get much done but...analysis.

Graham -

Well, the analysis was tongue in cheek ... as you said if you want to be a composer then leave this to a theorist and a mathematician or you'll never compose. Also, I realized last night at 12:30 am the analysis is not complete and you hit it on the nail - I didn't cover fully the why of the pitch choice ... and I want to end the analysis by saying exactly what you said - I did this by ear, therefore a well exposed, trained ear is a far more sophisticated theorist than the eyes, hands, and semantic analysis.

Tokke -

Read carefully. I will provide a mathematical basis for you both. Realized this is incomplete.

bumped up because it deserves to be for at least one more day

By all means, bump away! :D

Well that was needlessly complex.

The thing with chromatic relationships between consecutive diminished chords something that came up often in late 19th century harmony, and specially when through suspensions you could have "fake" harmonies where what was written isn't what was sounding.

I think voice leading is important to highlight if you're going to look at it that way. The way chromatic movement makes harmonic transition difficult to hear for example.

An easier possible explanation for what's happening in the first example is suspensions and resolutions happening at the same time consecutively. In that case, the first chord on that measure would be a D7 with a 4th suspension, but resolves to another suspension (B is suspended to Bb, Gb to F,) etc. I would write the enharmonic differently. In either case, entire chromatic movement is by itself readily understood, as well as suspensions. It's plainly obvious to see it from reading the music there what's going on.

As for the fauxbourdon, I'm not sure what use it could be explain this, specially since it'd be very vaguely related to the actual thing since there's no such a thing as a "chromatic" fauxbourdon, prolonged chromatic chord movement comes late in music history altogether. I think it's just over complicating something that isn't quite as complex as it looks like. Something I could say for the entire paper honestly.

On another note, I don't know if it's necessary or even possible for a composer to explain every single note. I don't think a painter is asked to explain every brush stroke either, for example. You just need to be able to explain why the notes are arranged in the way they are or why they're there at all, but not each single one.

Ah SSC, as I said part of this is tongue in cheek and part serious. Your explanation is fine too and actually that was one of the simplest explanations I offered to my theory teacher - in an earlier paper I showed that the progression is really an elaboration of the chromatic descent of dom7 chords. Yet he questioned the leap down a 6th in the bass and the tritone leap up. What can I say he is a devout Schenkerian. Sooooooooooo, I proposed another more complex cause, a series of descending dim 7 chords. Funny thing is he loved my complex explanation.

Regarding fauxbordon, you are correct there is no such thing as "chromatic fauxbordon". Yet why not consider it that way? We can borrow from the past and reinvent and the naming convention is fine. In my discussion the sidenote refers specifically to treatments of p4s aside from the top voices. I also found the dim7 chord viewpoint helpful to explain the plethora of octatonic scales in the viewpoint. Finally, that appendix offers for me at least interesting ways to delineate a compass where we can define start and endpoints which may be useful for composition, in particular treat treating the compass of a ninths as a set of independent, unique pitches but non-ordered.

There was also a pedagogical (and this is the earnest part of the paper) intent --- to show how enharmonic spellings of intervals do influence voice leading, why octatonic scales appear when employing the diminished triads, and a history of fauxborden and its pervasiveness in classical music.

So, SSC, your explanation is great for elegance and I'll add this to the post. But I think both viewpoints are valuable - sometimes the needlessly complex is useful for the tangents it takes you. It is like a runner who always does sprints and then one day tries a long distance run - he will be far more inefficient at long distance running than sprinting BUT neurologically if the long distance runs are implemented periodically, they will offer new neural connections, a chance for the faster twitch muscles to recuperate and overall be a better sprinter - if the long distance runs are used infrequently and properly timed.

PS. And per your last line, ah did you read my first response to Graham?

PPS. Looking forward to you posting some of your music or you tube suggestions for repertoire to check out.

I think elegance is the best when it comes to analysis. If it's complex, it has to have a good reason for that complexity. It means that what you want to extract from it can only be the result of a complicated elaboration, in this case I didn't really get what was the point of the complicated path to explaining it.

Besides, your teacher's question seems extremely irrelevant. Unless the point was to simply "be the teacher," and ask something just for the sake of asking. I don't see the meaning of it. The answer could've been a simple "It sounded better" or a thousand million other answers that wouldn't require 12 pages of analysis.

As a general thing though, the way to write sharps/flats depending on the key/chord root and movement isn't that much of a mystery. Even in full chromatic movement so long as there's an underlying function you can get a pretty clear "correct" approach to accidentals.