Harmony

Hi

I've just taken delivery on Walter Piston's 'Harmony' (5th edition) and am starting reading it, I've got to the chapter on harmonic progression in the major mode: principles of voice leading and I've had a go at writing block harmony to the first cantus firmus in Fux's counterpoint (transposed to C major) in the soprano. Please have a look and point out any errors in progression, voice leading, range or anything else

Thanks, Mark

god I'm a retard

take some time to look at all your voices, two by two. you have lots of parallel octaves and 5ths in there.

generally, you should not have such a wide space between voices either. Your tenor and alto are never within an octave of each other.

transpose the tenor part up one octave.

leading tone normally should resolve up to the tonic. some harmony texts allow it in interior voices to skip down to the dominant, but it still "sounds" kind of hollow.

in this particular case, your alto could have risen to unison "C" with the soprano, while your tenors rose to the median "E" causing a nice parallel series of 6ths between alto and tenor in those final measures (very nice sounding).

Like in counterpoint, avoid using the same harmony two measures in a row in whole-note exercises.

a hint:

look at your cantus.

establish first and final chords, final cadence,

then look for where it goes to and at what point it returns from there.

avoid your tonic chord as much as you can (until the end, of course).

when you are tempted to use tonic chords, look for substitutions for it (IV and VI)

Thanks ver ymuch, I've acted upon all of the paralells you pointed out and found a few more, here's the corrected version:

Thanks very much, I've acted upon all of the paralells you pointed out and found a few more, here's the corrected version:

much, much better!

you individual lines are also considerably more melodic now.

this is an oft' forgotten aspect of part writing.

each line really SHOULD have melodic interest on its own, at least, as much as is humanly possible.

this is one of those places where harmony and counterpoint cross over into each other's territories.

yeah, i was trying to keep the inner voices in stepswise moting but i supppse that's what makes it boring, needs a few leaps, especially the tenor.

Thanks, Mark

when harmonising a melody, would you recommend doing the bass all the way through then adding the inner voices or doing it all at the same time?

when harmonising a melody, would you recommend doing the bass all the way through then adding the inner voices or doing it all at the same time?

well, it really depends on what you prefer.

if you do the whole bass line first, you may end up coming back later and having to change it because of conflicts in the inner voices.

I think the important thing is to look at the melody and mark down where there are important cadence points.

with time you'll just see them easily by looking at the melody.

Thanks, I'll do another one and post it some time tomorrow, hopefully it won't need as many corrections!

Thanks, Mark

Here's the original with another one, again on a cantus firmus from Fux.

Mark

just so you don't end up going off on the wrong track:

don't think of your tenor as being so low!

the normal tenor part should always be up near the C 3rd space in the staff (sounding middle C).

VERY rarely will you get notes down low like you have going on in your second exercise.

general rule of thumb: NEVER more than an octave, only very rarely, between soprano and alto, and between alto and tenor.

however, you CAN have more space between tenor and bass.

I did one real fast just to show you, I also continued the rendering to give a "florid" version. it's the same harmony, but I've filled in the passing notes and suspensions, etc...

I've done the first exercise in the book in which a bassline is provided and you have to fill in the upper voices using each bassnote as the root of a chord, no inversions yet, not got that far. I've attempted a 'florid' version but without suspensions as yet as although I learnt about them in Fux I'm not entirely sure how to use them here so I'll wait until the corrisponding chapter.

I think again the tenor may be a little far from the alto but nowhere near as much as in my earlier attempts. I'm pretty sure it's in normal tenor range, just probably a bit too far away from the alto. I'll try and remember to keep it closer to middle C in future.

Thanks, Mark

and he forgets it again

and he forgets it again

LOL

well, little comments:

generally, in this sort of exercise (I'm not saying for later) avoid crossing bass and tenor lines. It's not actually forbidden (well, certain schools do forbid it), but it renders the over-all bass line a little confused.

really think of the "close pair" as alto and tenor. Those are the voices that should be in thirds, crossing, playing with each other, canonic, etc...

very nice effect there, starting on IV, and that final cadence is lovely - simple yet pure.

in future, you do have to be very careful starting on a non-tonic chord, only in the sense that you have to be sure to establish your tonic at SOME point within a relatively short time span. Just be forewarned about that difficulty. You did it beautifully here.

my only change would be to suggest having the tenor line jump up an octave (well, a 7th) at the 5th note:

A - B - A - G -(jump up a 7th to F) continue the rest of the tenor line one octave up.

that's actually a counterpoint trick... to look for descending phrases and have 7th leaps in them to change registers. it can often solve a lot of range problems for you.

it places your tenor a little high, but not illegally high. AND it solves the problem with the overly criss-cossed bass line.

I wouldn't have started on the IV myself but it was ana exercise from the book and i was working within the constraints of the exercise.

Thanks for the tip on the tenor, I'vecorrected and here's the corrected version:

did you see any paralells? that was the main thing i wanted to avoid here.

Thanks, Mark

can a tenor sing that high A?

can a tenor sing that high A?

it's sort of borderline.

however, don't forget that these are exercises, and as such, don't take into consideration which ensemble will be singing your piece. They are a sort of "idealized" version.

normally speaking, a choral tenor section SHOULD be able to reach a high Bb, or even B natural. That's more for a professional chorus. I would keep high A as the absolute limit for this sort of exercise.

However, don't forget that these are choral arrangements also, which means the tenors can "fake" those high notes as a sort of falsetto. It's not quite the same as singing with orchestra where the tenors need to sing "full voice" when they are in those ranges. With a 4-part choral arrangement, they can get by with falsetto-ing (excuse the neologism) their high notes.

did you see any paralells? that was the main thing i wanted to avoid here.

btw, there's a little plug-in in Finale (I don't know if you're using full Finale or just Notepad) that checks for parallels.

it only works on 2 staves that are contiguous, but you can check S and A, then A and T, T and B, etc... and if you really need to, you can always just move your staves around.

if you try it on 3 or more staves it screws up, telling you that there are // 5ths everywhere.

This is a good idea.... maybe we should have a sub forum in this main forum just for counterpoint exercises (correcting them), etc.? What do you think?

In the Work in Progress forum... we could put a subforum in for excersizes.

This is a good idea.... maybe we should have a sub forum in this main forum just for counterpoint exercises (correcting them), etc.? What do you think?

I recommend trying asking this in the announcements and suggestions forum, more people will see it and more imprortantly more people who could do something about it.

btw, there's a little plug-in in Finale (I don't know if you're using full Finale or just Notepad) that checks for parallels.

it only works on 2 staves that are contiguous, but you can check S and A, then A and T, T and B, etc... and if you really need to, you can always just move your staves around.

if you try it on 3 or more staves it screws up, telling you that there are // 5ths everywhere.

Thanks for the heads-up on that one, it'll save a bit of time.

here's the second exercise from piston, with encouragement from jujimufu I've been working on using motifs to form a more coherent whole.

here's the file with the first one, and the next two exercises, the first one juji gave some pointers on 'motifing' and the second i tackled on my own. The thing i was really trying to do was to build te soprano up to a climax in the last one, did it work?

PS, must be viewed in scroll view.

Mark

a lesson we learn in counterpoint, which is easily applicable (I don't mean it's easy to apply, but that it applies readily) to 4-part harmony is that it is best to avoid returning on the same note multiple times within a short period of time.

for example, if the phrase is C - D - E

then decorating it C -b-c-d-e- D -c-d-e-d-c- E just returns too much on the same notes.

there are times you can't help yourself because of material you are given, but this still forces you to seek out alternatives what will give the most interest melodically.

an example of returning on the same notes, but having it work, is the Barber Adagio. the reason it works is that the main motif DOES turn on itself, but the phrase ends with a dropping 3rd, then the subsequant phrase breaks from that turning and gives us a straightforward scalar pattern. In other words, where the ear expects that turn pattern, he gives us a scale.

Another reason the Barber works is that it's not a counterpoint/harmony exercise in 6 bars :angry:

he has LOOOONG breathe.

The best investment you could make is to purchase the volumes of Bach chorals. They're really inexpensive (a couple of dollars a piece) and contain 200 chorals each.

They're a little difficult to understand at first, there are so many non-harmonic notes in them. But they are worth the study. especially FOR those non-harmonic notes.