hey, Seth. I've watched a lot of educational stuff on youtube on classical style, i have to tell, your videos are really the next level. top quality. please keep doing it. greetings from russia
Thank you so much! I've got about fifteen more videos in the pipeline, and I hope to have at least three more posted by the end of the year. They take a long time to produce, but I hope that the results are worth the wait!
Dr. Monahan, I am a music composition student in Australia and a music theory nerd (nerds unite!!), and I have been working through your videos. I have them fantastic in solidifying the learnings I have gathered at University and in my own studies. I am very grateful and send my utmost thanks. Merci Prof.
I had just rewatched the series because I enjoyed it so much, it brings me great joy to see a new entry in my sub box! Thank you very much, I love these!
Thank you so much for making these videos! I can imagine just how much work and time it takes to create one of these. I truly savor each video; taking my time in jotting down notes whilst I watch them.
Thank you *so much* for continuing this series! I have watched a lot music theory youtube for about three years now, but this series (which I found two months ago) is easily the best exploration of music theory from the ground up that I've seen. The big 18 especially is such a useful concept.
It's really good to see and hear your amazing work again, professor! This is once more a great lesson, with superb audio illustrations and very clear and detailed visuals.
It's great to see your wonderful lessons again. Thank you for all the effort. If I can ask one question? It's something that bothers me for a long time and now when you published the video about the pedal points, this is a great opportunity for me to raise the question. When the bass tone of a musical chord is a nonchord tone, you do not want to annotate the inversion of the chord. I understand the reasons. However, then it is impossible to distinguish the annotation of a chord in the root position from the annotation of a chord whose inversion is not annotated. When this happens in a situation of a pedal point, there is no problem because you see the annotation for the pedal point which warns you about the situation. But what if this happens in some other situation? My way of thinking was: let's ignore the nonchord tones and annotate the inversion according to the remaining tones. So, the lowest tone that is not a nonchord tone will determine the inversion. Is this simply wrong or it can pass as an alternate logic? I know, it is hard to answer on such a kind of question but I see that you deeply think about the concepts so I hope ...
Hi Hrvoje! Thanks for the great question. It's also well-timed: I ran into exactly this problem late this summer, when I was recording Video no. 30. Around 10 minutes into the video, there's a Mendelssohn piece, a song without words. And in the second system, first bar, there's a non-chord tone in the bass, right on the downbeat. I was surprised, because this doesn't happen often in this music. My decision was to label the chord based on the note that the NCT resolved *into*-which I regard as the "real" bass note. But it looks kind of strange: the Roman numeral is under the downbeat, but the blue dot which marks the bass note is slightly to the right. It still seemed like the right decision though. Does that make sense?
Thank you for the answer. It makes sense, absolutely. In this situation, I would find the lowest musical note that isn't a nonchord tone, during the entire duration of the musical chord, and that is F#. Thus, I would see immediately that F# is the bass note for this chord. My question is more directed toward a situation in which G in the bass line would not be followed with F# but with A#. Now, the lowest tone of the bass line, during the entire duration of the chord, is G. I would still annotate this chord like its bass note is A#. This looks even more strange (especially, if the chord is not broken). I think (not sure) that some people would annotate this chord F#7/G to indicate G is the lowest musical note? Anyway, such annotation looks to me more like the Jazz way. Classic music would ignore the nonchord tones so I would annotate F#65 (the second inversion).
Your videos are the absolute best theory instruction on youtube. Not just useful for students of analysis, but of composition too. I recently found out that your website is gone. This is quite sad, because it contained so many useful resources. I remember a page with downloads of various teaching materials, an interactive version of your big-18 grid and even free downloads of your publications. For example, I remember that I really enjoyed your paper on sonata form in Mahler. Is there any other place where all your stuff is bundled? Also, is there any safeguard for these videos in case you accidentally use a hyperion recording or something and your channel gets instantly obliterated? Many thanks for this great, free content!
Hey ST. Yeah, I pulled sethmonahan.com down last year because (1) it was starting to look embarrassingly dated (I made it in 2013 as part of an effort to teach myself html) and (2) I haven't been very active in terms of publishing lately. Most of the research stuff is available for free to people who can log into JSTOR with academic credentials, but not to the general public. (I'll happily share anything I've got, but it's not posted online.) As for the channel: every single video I post takes me through several copyright challenges, thanks to bots that scan for commercial recordings. But RUclips's been pretty good so far in terms of honoring their fair-use status. And of course I've got the originals backed up in like five different places, in the event of a RUclips meltdown!
Nice to see that you are posting videos again! Have been viewing some of the older videos again and wonder if you have covered dubbling (third and leading tone) in some of them?
Hey! Thank you for (one of) the most beautiful series on RUclips. A question about the Schubert example at 05:00, not exactly on this topic: The transition from bar 3 to 4 has ascending parallel octaves from scale degree 5' to 6', then descending 6' to 5' from bar 4 to 5, while the melody seems independent inbetween. Maybe we can classify them as 'doubling', or maybe it is indeed a parallel movement we normally avoid. Regardless of the answer, my confusion remains: What is the boundry between parallel octaves and voice doublings? When and in which context are we allowed to move in unisons/octaves? What about the cases like this one, short and seamless melodic transitions looking like parallels, in every corner of the classical compositions by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven? I am desperate for some clarification since it's a major hole in my understanding of music theory hampering my motivation.
That's a great question-and also not one that's easy to answer in any kind of definitive sense. The Schubert at 5:00 is a good example, because the piano is **sort of** doubling the cello, but **not really.** Here's how I think about it: the rule against parallel perfect octaves mainly applies to pairs of voices that are equal or close to equal in terms of the contrapuntal weight. In the Schubert, that would be the cello melody and the bass line (piano LH). It immediately gets fuzzy when you start talking about parts that are unequally weighted, like the cello melody and the upper voice of the piano RH. Parallels of the latter sort are, as you say, everywhere. The former are much rarer. But they do turn up now and then. Check out m. 2 into m. 3 of Mahler's first "Kindertotenlied": ruclips.net/video/4r0omjTiRX4/видео.html
@@SethMonahan This explanation really makes sense. So maybe the skill will come with more experience and practice, revealing more clues for the interpretation of the context. Thank you a lot!
Hi Seth, First of all I would like to thank you so much for your fantastic videos (undoubtedly some of the best content on the whole of RUclips) that have taught me incredible amounts. The visuals are clear and well-presented, and I love how you incorporate real musical examples so as to make learning less abstract. I have a question, though, about a piece that I have been attempting to analyse. The first chord in bar 33 of the third movement of Beethoven’s pathetique sonata is giving me some trouble - it is a non-diatonic chord, however it’s Maj 7 quality suggests that it is neither an applied chord nor a Neapolitan. The only characteristic that suggests a chord that I know of is lowered scale degree 6, however I don’t believe that augmented 6th chords can have Maj 7 qualities. Would you be able to help me out? Perhaps I have overlooked something really simple? Thank you again for your fantastic videos!
Thanks so much for the kind comments! (I saw another comment of yours appear in my inbox a few weeks ago, but then couldn't find it on RUclips...turns out it had flagged your comment as "likely spam" for some reason. Glad I figured that out, and no idea why it happened!) At any rate: I think you mean bar 32 in Pathetique mvt. III, with Cb, Eb, Bb on the downbeat? It's an Italian augmented sixth chord with a suspension from the previous harmony, briefly making a "major seventh chord" sound. But the Bb isn't a chord tone, since you'd never see that chord on its own, with the Bb content to just sit there. When it drops to A natural, we get the "real" chord. For another instance of exactly the same thing, one half-step higher, check out the second movement of Mozart's E-minor violin sonata (K. 304, I think). I'm pretty sure I used that example in my "Lament Bass" video (no. 28). You get C, E, B in E minor, but then the B drops to A#. Always glad to help!
It’s so great in your videos to see the contexts of how these techniques are applied for effect by the masters. Often this does not come across so well when learning from theory books. One request along these lines (lacking in theory books), if I may, is a deep dive from you into textural voice doublings and how they are used. Looking at a few examples here it seems, to the untrained eye, like the chord changes outline or move from one perfect consonance to another in direct movement in some voices - something we’re taught to strictly avoid (even in instrumental writing) unless the voice is doubled. My question is when to define a voice in a texture as being doubled and when is it active? Thank you.
Hey Tom! I'll admit this isn't something I've thought a whole lot about, other than noticing individual instances where something struck me as odd. (Mozart's Alberti accompaniments, for instance, seem to imply parallel perfect fifths pretty regularly.) Why don't you point me toward a specific instance-in this video or any other-and I'll see if I have anything insightful to say?
@@SethMonahan Thanks a lot, Seth! A few that caught my eye in this video are the Mendelssohn Song without Words (27:20) where at the end of the second bar, the C moving to Bb in the soprano seems to visually form a parallel with the left-hand accompaniment. I say "visual" because it is not audible and may be best explained as an octave doubling, but it is something I would instinctively, and perhaps unnecessarily, avoid if trying to write in this style. Another example is the Haydn String Quartet in D (21:20). The first violin in bars 1 and 2 seems to imply an octave E to F# with the viola by arpeggiating chords. Again this is not really noticeable, but some counterpoint instructions warn against implying parallels when arpeggiating and to voice lead them as though they are "solid lines". Maybe the upward leaps of a 4th cancel a possible parallel, but the fact that both occur on the strong beat with the same melodic pattern and in a 4 voice texture would lead me as a self-learning amateur to think best to avoid this. A less salient example is bar 7 of the Haydn Farewell Symphony (17:26): the F# in the top voice seems to form an octave with a middle voice moving to bar 8. Maybe this is due to a textural reduction or an orchestral doubling, and again it presents no audible issues, it just seems like something to avoid going from theory books. Maybe this is just a case of experience and knowing what the ear is attracted to in a texture but if there are any general principles to extract that I can keep in mind for this sort of thing I'd be very grateful to know. Thanks again!
@@tomhamilton5707 There are no parallels in your first example. In the Mendelssohn, the left hand middle voice descends only after the soprano is already at Bb. Even if you were to analyze every note in this accompaniment as a separate voice, which would make this a 6-voice piece which it clearly isn't, there would not be a parallel, as it is not on the beat. There is a parallel octave in the Haydn quartet, but you should not consider it a problem if it sounds fine, which it does. Firstly, it does not occur in a strictly counterpountal texture. In fact, the excerpt mostly sounds to be in three parts, and this is clearly intentional. There is nothing wrong with a quartet temporarily playing in three parts. And even if it were a counterpuntal 4-part texture, I would say that parallel octaves *could* be permissible in a string quartet depending on context, as the different timbres of the instruments may provide the necessary differentiation of voices (for example if one instrument plays pizzicato) although that's clearly not the case here. The point is that rules of voice leading only apply in textures where the goal is to have independent voices. Whenever this is not the goal, you can label parallels as doublings, meaning that they are actually one voice, whose timbre has been altered through the introduction of different overtones. This is something you want to avoid especially in keyboard counterpoint, but something that is vital in many other kinds of music, especially orchestral. Hence, your example from the symphony is also not a problem. They are not actually different voices.
@@SpaghettiToaster Thank you so much for this comprehensive answer. This is something i'd been unsure of for a while, so this is a big help! Much appriciated.
Hey Shawn! You should check out the wikipedia article on it. There's still no final consensus on who wrote it. Some think it authentic, others absolutely not, and one ingenious theory by the scholar/performer Robert Levin argues that some of the instrumental parts are by Mozart, supplemented by others that were added by another composer later. It's actually really fascinating.
Hey, thanks Daniele. BTW: I just watched some of your videos with my morning coffee, and you are a phenomenal player. I'm so jealous! Electric guitar was my first instrument, but I haven't played in like twenty years. Watching you play gave me the itch to get out my Les Paul and get back to work...
Seth Monahan Thank you so so much, Seth! I watched all your videos! Your lessons and explanations are the most clear ever in the history of music theory! I know you play guitar, I hope you will resume to play more! I’m finishing an album that involves counterpoint and guitar, I would love to send it to you when it will be done!
Hey seth, are you able to stil able to perfom cadences such as a PAC when using tonic pedals? because I thought what would define a PAC function would surely be the bass note. Thanks
Great question, Romyn. Normally, I'd say no-for exactly the reason you state. (Cadences require bass motion!) But there are, I'll admit, situations where it sure FEELS like we have a cadence over a tonic pedal. I just saw one in class about 2 weeks ago. If I think of it, I'll follow up with you!
@@SethMonahan Okay, there are still a few things that I am a little bit fuzzy about... like for example, when using a pedal note in the bass, do you remove the bass note of chords above and only playing the upper two voices? And how are you able to have, for example, a dominant chord play above a tonic pedal note, and still act in dominant function? because i thought primarily it was the bass note that makes a chord its function. (not including the cadencial 64 chord because i know that is a dominant chord with tonic in the bass) Sorry if you already have explained this somewhere else, its still just a little grey for me. cheers! :)
@@romyn8726 1) A chord above a pedal point does not actually HAVE a bass note, and thus isn't in any inversion. It still has a root, of course, but that's different. A V7 above a tonic pedal, for instance, is not "in any inversion," because the lowest note in the texture isn't PART of the V7 chord. It's the tonic pedal itself. As for the question of function over pedals (2): it simplifies things rather too much to say that a chord's function is determined by its bass note. I definitely give that impression in Lessons 16 and 17, but that's by design, to make the pedagogy more effective. :) Ultimately, "functions" are about certain collections of notes proceeding to other collections of notes. (The dominant function, for instance, is really "about" scale degrees ^4 and ^7 resolving to ^3 and ^1, with a drop in harmonic tension.) People disagree about this, but I definitely feel that you can have changes of function over a tonic pedal. To me, T-PD-D-T over a tonic pedal sounds SO similar to other instances of T-PD-D-T that I can't help but hear the functions at work.
@@SethMonahan Amazing! that was really helpful! Thank you So just to clarify, in C major for example when playing V7 (G7) chord above a tonic pedal (C), would you still play the bass note of the V7 chord? (G) or would that role be given to the tonic pedal, since the necessary function of dominant is the more about scale degrees ^4 and ^7 resolving to ^3 and ^1, with a drop in harmonic tension, like you stated. To add to this, you mentioned that the bass note and the root note are different, obviously, but if played in there normal inversions would a V7 chord in c major still benefit from having the root note even though its the bass note? Or should that note be removed because the tonic pedal is meant to be the bass note?
@@romyn8726 OK-this comment convinces me of what I suspected before: you're confusing the bass of a chord with its root. The bass is the lowest note at any moment in some texture. The root is the note a chord is named after. So if you put G7 above C you by definition include the ROOT, because the root is one of the chord's four notes (G, B, D, F). But the root will be in an upper voice, because BASS in such a situation is C, the lowest note in the harmony. Does this make sense?
FANTASTIC recording. I saw Brad Mehldau play solo in Philly about 20 years ago, and it still stays with me as one of my favorite concerts ever. What's interesting is that the middle-voice tonic pedal is an import from the world of fingerstyle acoustic guitar, but it sounds gorgeous on the piano too. (I also like that it's pulsing there through all of the harmonic changes, including the dominant.) I love the wacky geometries that come about when guitar music is transplanted to piano. I was toying around last year with a piano arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song," which is played in a weird alternate tuning. And many of the specific chords/voicings are things you'd just NEVER think of if you were composing on the piano alone.
hey, Seth. I've watched a lot of educational stuff on youtube on classical style, i have to tell, your videos are really the next level. top quality. please keep doing it. greetings from russia
Thank you so much! I've got about fifteen more videos in the pipeline, and I hope to have at least three more posted by the end of the year. They take a long time to produce, but I hope that the results are worth the wait!
I’m so excited to see a new one coming out after almost a year🤩
Yes-me too! I’ll have another posted in a day or two, and perhaps a third before the end of August.
@@SethMonahan Awesome!
@@SethMonahan Welcome back!!!
Dr. Monahan, I am a music composition student in Australia and a music theory nerd (nerds unite!!), and I have been working through your videos. I have them fantastic in solidifying the learnings I have gathered at University and in my own studies. I am very grateful and send my utmost thanks. Merci Prof.
I had just rewatched the series because I enjoyed it so much, it brings me great joy to see a new entry in my sub box! Thank you very much, I love these!
Thank you so much for making these videos! I can imagine just how much work and time it takes to create one of these. I truly savor each video; taking my time in jotting down notes whilst I watch them.
Thank you *so much* for continuing this series! I have watched a lot music theory youtube for about three years now, but this series (which I found two months ago) is easily the best exploration of music theory from the ground up that I've seen. The big 18 especially is such a useful concept.
This made my day, I'm so happy now, thanks !
You're very welcome!
Wonderful to have you back! Your videos are a real treasure. Thanks a lot!
It's really good to see and hear your amazing work again, professor! This is once more a great lesson, with superb audio illustrations and very clear and detailed visuals.
Thank you for these videos Seth, I've been watching these for quite a bit and they are very insightful. 30 min of study material again haha
Thanks, Tsi! Look for another one tomorrow or Friday...
Wow! New video! Your videos are amazing and I share them with my music students. Thank you so much for all your work!
It's great to see your wonderful lessons again. Thank you for all the effort.
If I can ask one question? It's something that bothers me for a long time and now when you published the video about the pedal points, this is a great opportunity for me to raise the question.
When the bass tone of a musical chord is a nonchord tone, you do not want to annotate the inversion of the chord. I understand the reasons. However, then it is impossible to distinguish the annotation of a chord in the root position from the annotation of a chord whose inversion is not annotated. When this happens in a situation of a pedal point, there is no problem because you see the annotation for the pedal point which warns you about the situation. But what if this happens in some other situation?
My way of thinking was: let's ignore the nonchord tones and annotate the inversion according to the remaining tones. So, the lowest tone that is not a nonchord tone will determine the inversion.
Is this simply wrong or it can pass as an alternate logic?
I know, it is hard to answer on such a kind of question but I see that you deeply think about the concepts so I hope ...
Hi Hrvoje! Thanks for the great question. It's also well-timed: I ran into exactly this problem late this summer, when I was recording Video no. 30. Around 10 minutes into the video, there's a Mendelssohn piece, a song without words. And in the second system, first bar, there's a non-chord tone in the bass, right on the downbeat. I was surprised, because this doesn't happen often in this music. My decision was to label the chord based on the note that the NCT resolved *into*-which I regard as the "real" bass note. But it looks kind of strange: the Roman numeral is under the downbeat, but the blue dot which marks the bass note is slightly to the right. It still seemed like the right decision though. Does that make sense?
Thank you for the answer. It makes sense, absolutely. In this situation, I would find the lowest musical note that isn't a nonchord tone, during the entire duration of the musical chord, and that is F#. Thus, I would see immediately that F# is the bass note for this chord.
My question is more directed toward a situation in which G in the bass line would not be followed with F# but with A#. Now, the lowest tone of the bass line, during the entire duration of the chord, is G. I would still annotate this chord like its bass note is A#. This looks even more strange (especially, if the chord is not broken).
I think (not sure) that some people would annotate this chord F#7/G to indicate G is the lowest musical note? Anyway, such annotation looks to me more like the Jazz way. Classic music would ignore the nonchord tones so I would annotate F#65 (the second inversion).
Your videos are the absolute best theory instruction on youtube. Not just useful for students of analysis, but of composition too. I recently found out that your website is gone. This is quite sad, because it contained so many useful resources. I remember a page with downloads of various teaching materials, an interactive version of your big-18 grid and even free downloads of your publications. For example, I remember that I really enjoyed your paper on sonata form in Mahler. Is there any other place where all your stuff is bundled? Also, is there any safeguard for these videos in case you accidentally use a hyperion recording or something and your channel gets instantly obliterated? Many thanks for this great, free content!
Hey ST. Yeah, I pulled sethmonahan.com down last year because (1) it was starting to look embarrassingly dated (I made it in 2013 as part of an effort to teach myself html) and (2) I haven't been very active in terms of publishing lately. Most of the research stuff is available for free to people who can log into JSTOR with academic credentials, but not to the general public. (I'll happily share anything I've got, but it's not posted online.) As for the channel: every single video I post takes me through several copyright challenges, thanks to bots that scan for commercial recordings. But RUclips's been pretty good so far in terms of honoring their fair-use status. And of course I've got the originals backed up in like five different places, in the event of a RUclips meltdown!
so glad to see you back :D
Thank you so much for sharing those lessons with us !!
Welcome back, Seth! Nice to see another great video!)
Nice to see that you are posting videos again!
Have been viewing some of the older videos again and wonder if you have covered dubbling (third and leading tone) in some of them?
This is such a great video! Thanks a lot man. :)
Glad you liked it!
Very interesting and professional
Hey! Thank you for (one of) the most beautiful series on RUclips. A question about the Schubert example at 05:00, not exactly on this topic:
The transition from bar 3 to 4 has ascending parallel octaves from scale degree 5' to 6', then descending 6' to 5' from bar 4 to 5, while the melody seems independent inbetween. Maybe we can classify them as 'doubling', or maybe it is indeed a parallel movement we normally avoid. Regardless of the answer, my confusion remains: What is the boundry between parallel octaves and voice doublings? When and in which context are we allowed to move in unisons/octaves? What about the cases like this one, short and seamless melodic transitions looking like parallels, in every corner of the classical compositions by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven? I am desperate for some clarification since it's a major hole in my understanding of music theory hampering my motivation.
That's a great question-and also not one that's easy to answer in any kind of definitive sense. The Schubert at 5:00 is a good example, because the piano is **sort of** doubling the cello, but **not really.**
Here's how I think about it: the rule against parallel perfect octaves mainly applies to pairs of voices that are equal or close to equal in terms of the contrapuntal weight. In the Schubert, that would be the cello melody and the bass line (piano LH). It immediately gets fuzzy when you start talking about parts that are unequally weighted, like the cello melody and the upper voice of the piano RH.
Parallels of the latter sort are, as you say, everywhere. The former are much rarer. But they do turn up now and then. Check out m. 2 into m. 3 of Mahler's first "Kindertotenlied": ruclips.net/video/4r0omjTiRX4/видео.html
@@SethMonahan This explanation really makes sense. So maybe the skill will come with more experience and practice, revealing more clues for the interpretation of the context. Thank you a lot!
Best music theory channel. Thanks for sharing.
I love the opening of St. John Passion! It gets very spicy at parts.
Great video! Gonna experiemt with some pop chord progressions over tonic pedal. Dominant pedals next?
Also you can't pronounce clavier like that xD
Hi Seth,
First of all I would like to thank you so much for your fantastic videos (undoubtedly some of the best content on the whole of RUclips) that have taught me incredible amounts. The visuals are clear and well-presented, and I love how you incorporate real musical examples so as to make learning less abstract. I have a question, though, about a piece that I have been attempting to analyse. The first chord in bar 33 of the third movement of Beethoven’s pathetique sonata is giving me some trouble - it is a non-diatonic chord, however it’s Maj 7 quality suggests that it is neither an applied chord nor a Neapolitan. The only characteristic that suggests a chord that I know of is lowered scale degree 6, however I don’t believe that augmented 6th chords can have Maj 7 qualities. Would you be able to help me out? Perhaps I have overlooked something really simple?
Thank you again for your fantastic videos!
Thanks so much for the kind comments! (I saw another comment of yours appear in my inbox a few weeks ago, but then couldn't find it on RUclips...turns out it had flagged your comment as "likely spam" for some reason. Glad I figured that out, and no idea why it happened!)
At any rate: I think you mean bar 32 in Pathetique mvt. III, with Cb, Eb, Bb on the downbeat? It's an Italian augmented sixth chord with a suspension from the previous harmony, briefly making a "major seventh chord" sound. But the Bb isn't a chord tone, since you'd never see that chord on its own, with the Bb content to just sit there. When it drops to A natural, we get the "real" chord. For another instance of exactly the same thing, one half-step higher, check out the second movement of Mozart's E-minor violin sonata (K. 304, I think). I'm pretty sure I used that example in my "Lament Bass" video (no. 28). You get C, E, B in E minor, but then the B drops to A#.
Always glad to help!
Thank you so much that makes perfect sense! I wish you all the best and hope that you are staying well
I don't quite understand everything just yet....but I'm sure learning a lot! 😊
What moitivates you to put this amazing video's for free?
I have heard that motion from 6 to 5 in minor being referred to as the "heartbreak tension", especially when occurring over dominant zone chords.
It’s so great in your videos to see the contexts of how these techniques are applied for effect by the masters. Often this does not come across so well when learning from theory books.
One request along these lines (lacking in theory books), if I may, is a deep dive from you into textural voice doublings and how they are used. Looking at a few examples here it seems, to the untrained eye, like the chord changes outline or move from one perfect consonance to another in direct movement in some voices - something we’re taught to strictly avoid (even in instrumental writing) unless the voice is doubled.
My question is when to define a voice in a texture as being doubled and when is it active? Thank you.
Hey Tom! I'll admit this isn't something I've thought a whole lot about, other than noticing individual instances where something struck me as odd. (Mozart's Alberti accompaniments, for instance, seem to imply parallel perfect fifths pretty regularly.) Why don't you point me toward a specific instance-in this video or any other-and I'll see if I have anything insightful to say?
@@SethMonahan Thanks a lot, Seth! A few that caught my eye in this video are the Mendelssohn Song without Words (27:20) where at the end of the second bar, the C moving to Bb in the soprano seems to visually form a parallel with the left-hand accompaniment. I say "visual" because it is not audible and may be best explained as an octave doubling, but it is something I would instinctively, and perhaps unnecessarily, avoid if trying to write in this style.
Another example is the Haydn String Quartet in D (21:20). The first violin in bars 1 and 2 seems to imply an octave E to F# with the viola by arpeggiating chords. Again this is not really noticeable, but some counterpoint instructions warn against implying parallels when arpeggiating and to voice lead them as though they are "solid lines". Maybe the upward leaps of a 4th cancel a possible parallel, but the fact that both occur on the strong beat with the same melodic pattern and in a 4 voice texture would lead me as a self-learning amateur to think best to avoid this.
A less salient example is bar 7 of the Haydn Farewell Symphony (17:26): the F# in the top voice seems to form an octave with a middle voice moving to bar 8. Maybe this is due to a textural reduction or an orchestral doubling, and again it presents no audible issues, it just seems like something to avoid going from theory books.
Maybe this is just a case of experience and knowing what the ear is attracted to in a texture but if there are any general principles to extract that I can keep in mind for this sort of thing I'd be very grateful to know.
Thanks again!
@@tomhamilton5707 There are no parallels in your first example. In the Mendelssohn, the left hand middle voice descends only after the soprano is already at Bb. Even if you were to analyze every note in this accompaniment as a separate voice, which would make this a 6-voice piece which it clearly isn't, there would not be a parallel, as it is not on the beat. There is a parallel octave in the Haydn quartet, but you should not consider it a problem if it sounds fine, which it does. Firstly, it does not occur in a strictly counterpountal texture. In fact, the excerpt mostly sounds to be in three parts, and this is clearly intentional. There is nothing wrong with a quartet temporarily playing in three parts. And even if it were a counterpuntal 4-part texture, I would say that parallel octaves *could* be permissible in a string quartet depending on context, as the different timbres of the instruments may provide the necessary differentiation of voices (for example if one instrument plays pizzicato) although that's clearly not the case here. The point is that rules of voice leading only apply in textures where the goal is to have independent voices. Whenever this is not the goal, you can label parallels as doublings, meaning that they are actually one voice, whose timbre has been altered through the introduction of different overtones. This is something you want to avoid especially in keyboard counterpoint, but something that is vital in many other kinds of music, especially orchestral. Hence, your example from the symphony is also not a problem. They are not actually different voices.
@@SpaghettiToaster Thank you so much for this comprehensive answer. This is something i'd been unsure of for a while, so this is a big help! Much appriciated.
if two voices are doing the same thing, they are no longer two different voices. this is pretty much it
Hi Seth, I was wondering about Sinfonia Concertante.. who wrote it? Thanks for putting these videos up!
Hey Shawn! You should check out the wikipedia article on it. There's still no final consensus on who wrote it. Some think it authentic, others absolutely not, and one ingenious theory by the scholar/performer Robert Levin argues that some of the instrumental parts are by Mozart, supplemented by others that were added by another composer later. It's actually really fascinating.
Always amazing videos!!!!
Hey, thanks Daniele. BTW: I just watched some of your videos with my morning coffee, and you are a phenomenal player. I'm so jealous! Electric guitar was my first instrument, but I haven't played in like twenty years. Watching you play gave me the itch to get out my Les Paul and get back to work...
Seth Monahan Thank you so so much, Seth! I watched all your videos! Your lessons and explanations are the most clear ever in the history of music theory! I know you play guitar, I hope you will resume to play more! I’m finishing an album that involves counterpoint and guitar, I would love to send it to you when it will be done!
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Hey seth, are you able to stil able to perfom cadences such as a PAC when using tonic pedals? because I thought what would define a PAC function would surely be the bass note. Thanks
Great question, Romyn. Normally, I'd say no-for exactly the reason you state. (Cadences require bass motion!) But there are, I'll admit, situations where it sure FEELS like we have a cadence over a tonic pedal. I just saw one in class about 2 weeks ago. If I think of it, I'll follow up with you!
@@SethMonahan Okay, there are still a few things that I am a little bit fuzzy about...
like for example, when using a pedal note in the bass, do you remove the bass note of chords above and only playing the upper two voices?
And how are you able to have, for example, a dominant chord play above a tonic pedal note, and still act in dominant function? because i thought primarily it was the bass note that makes a chord its function. (not including the cadencial 64 chord because i know that is a dominant chord with tonic in the bass)
Sorry if you already have explained this somewhere else, its still just a little grey for me.
cheers! :)
@@romyn8726 1) A chord above a pedal point does not actually HAVE a bass note, and thus isn't in any inversion. It still has a root, of course, but that's different. A V7 above a tonic pedal, for instance, is not "in any inversion," because the lowest note in the texture isn't PART of the V7 chord. It's the tonic pedal itself.
As for the question of function over pedals (2): it simplifies things rather too much to say that a chord's function is determined by its bass note. I definitely give that impression in Lessons 16 and 17, but that's by design, to make the pedagogy more effective. :) Ultimately, "functions" are about certain collections of notes proceeding to other collections of notes. (The dominant function, for instance, is really "about" scale degrees ^4 and ^7 resolving to ^3 and ^1, with a drop in harmonic tension.) People disagree about this, but I definitely feel that you can have changes of function over a tonic pedal. To me, T-PD-D-T over a tonic pedal sounds SO similar to other instances of T-PD-D-T that I can't help but hear the functions at work.
@@SethMonahan Amazing! that was really helpful! Thank you
So just to clarify, in C major for example when playing V7 (G7) chord above a tonic pedal (C), would you still play the bass note of the V7 chord? (G) or would that role be given to the tonic pedal, since the necessary function of dominant is the more about scale degrees ^4 and ^7 resolving to ^3 and ^1, with a drop in harmonic tension, like you stated.
To add to this, you mentioned that the bass note and the root note are different, obviously, but if played in there normal inversions would a V7 chord in c major still benefit from having the root note even though its the bass note? Or should that note be removed because the tonic pedal is meant to be the bass note?
@@romyn8726 OK-this comment convinces me of what I suspected before: you're confusing the bass of a chord with its root. The bass is the lowest note at any moment in some texture. The root is the note a chord is named after. So if you put G7 above C you by definition include the ROOT, because the root is one of the chord's four notes (G, B, D, F). But the root will be in an upper voice, because BASS in such a situation is C, the lowest note in the harmony. Does this make sense?
Welcome back :) o/
My pleasure!
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BEST CHANEL
Huge fun! 👍
Here’s an interesting use of a pedal point - not in the base, but in the middle, for the entire piece. ruclips.net/video/kruKQCY77bc/видео.html
FANTASTIC recording. I saw Brad Mehldau play solo in Philly about 20 years ago, and it still stays with me as one of my favorite concerts ever. What's interesting is that the middle-voice tonic pedal is an import from the world of fingerstyle acoustic guitar, but it sounds gorgeous on the piano too. (I also like that it's pulsing there through all of the harmonic changes, including the dominant.) I love the wacky geometries that come about when guitar music is transplanted to piano. I was toying around last year with a piano arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song," which is played in a weird alternate tuning. And many of the specific chords/voicings are things you'd just NEVER think of if you were composing on the piano alone.
Yeeeees I love theory 🥰🥰🥰
YAY!