Hi! My educational content is available for free so that anyone can learn and study music analysis and composition. If you enjoy what I do, please consider supporting me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/composition-class. There, you'll also find options to access PDF files of my analyses, receive feedback on your compositions, and join my group and individual lessons. Thank you!
Your video is as usual interesting, I dislike however this piece because the structure of it - it's not concise and it's not clear to me why it has some kind of a "game" inside it. Why one cannot say "This is just randomly modulating here and there"? It is clear to me however that it's coherent, it's not random in the sense of incoherency! It's "random" in the sense that I don't find why modulating to C major or D major, why one of them is clearly invalid? If Bach had modulated to the other one first, would we say "Bach has made a mistake here, he should have chosen otherwise"
Thank you for your comment! I understand your concern, but there's an important distinction when modulating in music, especially when in the key of G major. Modulating to C major (the subdominant) creates less tension compared to modulating to D major (the dominant), which naturally carries more tension. Both choices have musical reasoning behind them, and while it might feel "random" at first, these modulations follow a coherent structure that contributes to the overall feel and direction of the piece. I hope this helps clarify things a bit!
@@syroyid-class You are correct, going to the dominant always creates more tension than subdominant. But I am pretty sure you'd agree there's also an advantage to sometimes choosing less tension. For example imagine someone going to IV at first, in order to trick us and then modulate to the V of the original key from its IV! Can the composer do it well? Does the composer have that ability to create such a sharp but beautiful modulation? But I am creating a gamified scenario, where there's a very special and challenging highlight we want to achieve and that creates interest for me when listening. When I listen to a stretto fugue, it tickles my interest because I am trying to imagine what is he going to do with this subject? But doing this is not simple, it's not easy to imagine how it can be done or what can be done. Another fun thing to do is going to vi, in order to go to V! It's sometimes good to save tension for laters, sneaky and beautiful. But now again what feels random, even after understanding those strategic choices, is that it doesn't feel inevitable. I feel like Bach could make an equally beautiful piece with a different schema of modulations... So those specific modulations don't actually have a special effect on me
Well... In that case, I would like to challenge you to rewrite Bach's BWV 1007 and provide alternative modulations that would work and sound equally correct like Bach's and let people decide. It can become a beautiful and useful composition assignment. Soon you will realize that BWV 1007 is quite inevitable. I personally couldn't rewrite so easily his harmony
@@syroyid-class Aha! I like your thinking and response, before we create a logical question we must create the system of logic! In other words I would want to see a program that can test entirely methodically and algorithmically "how good" a solution is! What makes a game fun for me is the beautiful mathematical precision of the rules! Rules that can be run by a machine! - However, if you want to say that this part of music is more a matter of taste, aka we just need to let people decide - they would decide pop music is most beautiful. And I find that horrendous! Pop music is big ew for me, and that's okay that I differ from them right? But then it means that no other person can decide for me what's beautiful. - However!!! Here is a big hopeful however! Maybe we can't agree on whether something is beautiful or not, fine, but we can agree on whether it is contrapuntal, we can agree at least often enough - on what is the tonal center in a particular moment! Maybe the last one not as much. But that is hopeful because that means we can agree on something! And we should test our students by the standard we agree on! - (Also one small problem with "let the people decide", they already got used to how BWV 1007 with how it is, even if we brought Bach to life there's a chance he wouldn't be able to do better - but be able to do better in relation to someone who didn't hear it prior)
Hi! My educational content is available for free so that anyone can learn and study music analysis and composition. If you enjoy what I do, please consider supporting me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/composition-class. There, you'll also find options to access PDF files of my analyses, receive feedback on your compositions, and join my group and individual lessons. Thank you!
Perfect explanation
Thanks! What are your thoughts about my musical reinterpretation of Bach's piece?
I was thinking about the theme of fugue in Dminor after famous Toccata: is almost the same notes.
That's true. What's your musical background?
First!
Every Breath You Take by the Police starts the same, I think.
They are slightly different...
The Police is... G - Em - C - D - G
Bach is... G - C/G - D7/G - G
Your video is as usual interesting, I dislike however this piece because the structure of it - it's not concise and it's not clear to me why it has some kind of a "game" inside it. Why one cannot say "This is just randomly modulating here and there"? It is clear to me however that it's coherent, it's not random in the sense of incoherency! It's "random" in the sense that I don't find why modulating to C major or D major, why one of them is clearly invalid? If Bach had modulated to the other one first, would we say "Bach has made a mistake here, he should have chosen otherwise"
Thank you for your comment! I understand your concern, but there's an important distinction when modulating in music, especially when in the key of G major. Modulating to C major (the subdominant) creates less tension compared to modulating to D major (the dominant), which naturally carries more tension. Both choices have musical reasoning behind them, and while it might feel "random" at first, these modulations follow a coherent structure that contributes to the overall feel and direction of the piece. I hope this helps clarify things a bit!
@@syroyid-class You are correct, going to the dominant always creates more tension than subdominant. But I am pretty sure you'd agree there's also an advantage to sometimes choosing less tension. For example imagine someone going to IV at first, in order to trick us and then modulate to the V of the original key from its IV! Can the composer do it well? Does the composer have that ability to create such a sharp but beautiful modulation? But I am creating a gamified scenario, where there's a very special and challenging highlight we want to achieve and that creates interest for me when listening. When I listen to a stretto fugue, it tickles my interest because I am trying to imagine what is he going to do with this subject? But doing this is not simple, it's not easy to imagine how it can be done or what can be done.
Another fun thing to do is going to vi, in order to go to V! It's sometimes good to save tension for laters, sneaky and beautiful.
But now again what feels random, even after understanding those strategic choices, is that it doesn't feel inevitable. I feel like Bach could make an equally beautiful piece with a different schema of modulations... So those specific modulations don't actually have a special effect on me
Well... In that case, I would like to challenge you to rewrite Bach's BWV 1007 and provide alternative modulations that would work and sound equally correct like Bach's and let people decide. It can become a beautiful and useful composition assignment. Soon you will realize that BWV 1007 is quite inevitable. I personally couldn't rewrite so easily his harmony
@@syroyid-class Aha! I like your thinking and response, before we create a logical question we must create the system of logic! In other words I would want to see a program that can test entirely methodically and algorithmically "how good" a solution is! What makes a game fun for me is the beautiful mathematical precision of the rules! Rules that can be run by a machine!
-
However, if you want to say that this part of music is more a matter of taste, aka we just need to let people decide - they would decide pop music is most beautiful. And I find that horrendous! Pop music is big ew for me, and that's okay that I differ from them right? But then it means that no other person can decide for me what's beautiful.
-
However!!! Here is a big hopeful however! Maybe we can't agree on whether something is beautiful or not, fine, but we can agree on whether it is contrapuntal, we can agree at least often enough - on what is the tonal center in a particular moment! Maybe the last one not as much. But that is hopeful because that means we can agree on something! And we should test our students by the standard we agree on!
-
(Also one small problem with "let the people decide", they already got used to how BWV 1007 with how it is, even if we brought Bach to life there's a chance he wouldn't be able to do better - but be able to do better in relation to someone who didn't hear it prior)