I'm really loving the videos! I study music composition in Brazil and your courses have been imensily helpfull and inspirational! My university is more focused in the education of performers, so all the topics, from counterpoint to harmony, are too superficial to be realistic used in real compositional and creative scenarios. Altough I'm majoring composition, my composition teacher is not very good teaching technique. You are making a big difference in my education and in my musical path. Thank you so much!
Dr. Gran - very nice video, you're covering a lot of material in a short time. Humble suggestion - have each visual supported by an audio excerpt. The viewer who is knowledgable enough to auditate all these examples probably already knows the material, whereas students who would benefit from this knowledge won't be able to hear this in their heads, but will almost certainly not make it though the whole video without the stimulation of supporting audio excerpts.
I was better about this when I first started making videos, but for some reason I've gotten lazy with including audio clips for all of the diagrams. Good tip!
Wonderful video, Mr. Gran! I've really enjoyed every video I've watched from your tonal voice leading series, as they've encouraged me to break the infamous "blank page syndrome" like nothing else, and thus I've dared to compose my own music (mostly "free" counterpoint anyway, although I'm more aware of every action I do, and I come back to your tonal voice leading playlist when in doubt). Kudos for the popular music examples on this one! 😎
Hi, I just have a quick question regarding voice leading. I've always been told that in a 4 part chorale for example every voice has to move as little as possible, but in single line counterpoint and also in this video (especially the voice exchange) it seems possible to have leaps whereas thats kind of a last resort in chorales. Are these different styles or is counterpoint treated a little differently than a chorale? Thanks in advance!
Great question with a complicated answer but I’ll try my best. In thoroughbass and later “keyboard harmony” textbooks, the student is told what the chords are and needs to find a particular realization, so the advice is to keep the fingers on common tones and to pick nearby notes of the adjacent chords. But in species counterpoint, we are only given the melody of the cantus firmus, and so we get to choose the chords that provide the best voice leading. It’s like two ways down the same street. In strict counterpoint (which was very much choral/vocal based instead of keyboard based) the emphasis was to choose chord progressions that allow for multiple independent melodies that are each just as interesting as the cantus firmus, which meant leaps and voice crossings and other attention grabbing things.
Actually I should not have said they shouldn’t be used at all. Fourths can be used on the upbeat as long as they are approached and left by step as a passing tone (as we see in the chord progression at the beginning of the video and in the example at 17:16). They just have to be correctly treated as a dissonance.
Dr. Gran, the example you display in the Conclusion section have a base harmonic rhythm of changing harmony twice a measure, in contrast to one per measure in your two-voice examples. My question is how harmonic rhythm is treated in contrapuntal writings. Are they treated as a mere by-product arose from the melodies and number of voices that I do not have to pay special attention?
Hello Doctor, I was wondering about notation systems used to compare chords played simultaneously with other chords. Here you present slash notation as one way of showing the intention of the passing chord under the I-ii-V-I. Though I was wondering if their was an analog to thorough bass notation where from the numbers presented one can determine the relation of one chord over another. I know in jazz notation they use things like CM7+9b12 to describe complex chord shapes, but that doesn't tell me much about the intended construction C major plus B minor. I've seen a variant of slash notation where the bass tone actually describes a chord to be played under the main chord, but that too doesn't explain dissonant or consonant relationships like counterpoint does. Is their a form of notation that allows for one to construct chords and then place them on top of each other and notate that as the construction?
That's an interesting question. I don't know of any kind of notation that would do that, but of course we could invent a kind of slash notation that indicates a combination of chord qualities (like CM/Bm, or some such thing) if the context required it.
Hi Jacob, another fantastic video. Just a question regarding the pedal point at the start of the video: I can see that most of the dissonances can be explained as passing notes, but what about the C note which starts on the second chord (642)? This is a 2nd so is a dissonance, but has not been prepared in the previous chord. On the face of it, it looks like it could be explained as some sort of retardation, resolving upwards to 3, but its lack of preparation means that its not that simple? ed
Great question, Ed. The ambiguity comes from my chosen realization of the bass figures; I started with a three-note chord moving to a four-note chord, so that additional voice seems to just pop out of nowhere. Unlike in strict counterpoint, the number of voices in thoroughbass is left to the discretion of the continuo player, and in free composition it is left to the composer. With the first B-flat chord in fifth position, the C can't be introduced by B-flat without creating parallel fifths with the line that goes F - G. But for any other initial hand position for the B-flat chord, the note C in the second chord will be introduced and resolved as a passing dissonance. I chose the realization that I did because I wanted the F - G - A - B-flat line in the top voice for clarity, but I needed to avoid those parallel fifths.
@@JacobGran Hi Jacob! 'But for any other initial hand position for the B-flat chord, the note C in the second chord will be introduced and resolved as a passing dissonance. ' just a bit confused about what you mean by 'hand position'. I can see the problem re parallell 5ths. When you talk about the hand position, are you essentially talking about the inversion/ pattern of notes from top to bottom? If so, if the first chord's D note lead to the C in the second chord, would this be a kind of auxiliary note dissonance , as the overall motion is D-C-D. if we came to the C in the second chord from F, then I'm not sure how this would be a passing dissonance? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding! Ed
From what I can see, the difference between your explanations/exercises and the example at the beginning from Bob Dylans song is that those passing chords in Jokerman all have the bass note in them for each chord as opposed to having one long sustained bass note for all the chords. For me, there is a big difference playing the bass note on each chord as opposed to just playing one long bass note with passing chords on the up beats. You mention something about this in your video but I am not sure I understood you. Are you saying that it is the same thing having one whole note bass CF with the dissonant chords on the upbeats as having the bass play for the up beats as well? The way I see it, having passing chords on the up beat only while keeping the bass on the downbeats you get a much milder dissonance, almost like with suspension dissonances which really work a lot of the time because they are not struck at the same time as the dissonant interval. I could be wrong of course so please enlighten me :)
Great question. You are exactly right to say that the tone repetitions make a musical difference, but the question is whether that difference is within the voice leading or lies somewhere else. Imagine a measure of a third species exercise that goes like this: Ctpt: | G A B C | CF: | C | and compare it to an example with the CF whole note broken into rearticulated quarter notes, like this: Ctpt: | G A B C | CF: | C C C C | All we need to do to change the above example into the model from the video is to keep the same rhythmic proportion but stretch it out over several measures. The four measures of this phrase have the same pattern of stresses that each beat would have within a measure of common time, which is sometimes referred to as Hypermeter: Ctpt: | G | A | B | C | CF: | C | C | C | C | This might look like a 1:1 rhythmic proportion that breaks the rules of first species (the 1:1 dissonant interval of a seventh in the third measure). But rearticulating a stationary tone does not change the underlying voice leading; the oblique motion (whether within the measure or across the phrase) is best understood as third species, and I think it presents itself to our ears that way as well. Similarly, one of the ways that composers can create suspensions is through a tone repetition, not just through syncopation. On instruments that don't have much sustaining power, like a piano or a mandolin, tone repetitions become a very important concern for orchestration, style, and expression, but not for the underlying voice leading. This was sort of rambling but I hope it clarifies my way of thinking.
@@JacobGran "On instruments that don't have much sustaining power, like a piano or a mandolin, tone repetitions become a very important concern for orchestration, style, and expression, but not for the underlying voice leading". I'm not sure you can say that. It depends heavily on context. Imagine you have a slow harpsichord piece. There is a low bass note at the beginning, with subsequent bass notes being in a higher register for the next seven beats. This can mean one of three things: 1) The low note is in fact the true bass note and a part of the subsequent chords and should be analyzed as part of the voice leading as you have described. On the harpsichord, this would only work if the subsequent chords clearly imply that note as their bass note, perhaps doubling it in a higher voice, since the sustain has long worn off. 2) The low note is a pedal tone, in which case it would almost necessarily have to be repeated to be perceived as such, since the subsequent chords may not contain it at all and the listener would just hear the harmonies created in the upper voices. 3) The bass does really leap and the low note has no special significance past its sounding duration. All three do occur in music, don't they?
Yes, I should have been clearer in that last sentence: my point is not that tone repetitions are always superfluous to the voice leading (they do occur in first species counterpoint, for instance), but that there is a difference between tone repetitions that lead to genuine oblique motion and purely rhythmic note repetitions that could happen for compositional reasons other than voice leading. I agree that your three situations do occur in real music, but I am failing to see how that relates to the topic of how tone repetitions affect voice leading. You have given three different voice leading situations: 1) what Schenker would call a "register transfer," or "coupling," which does involve a tone repetition but requires the complicating factor of register, and where there may or may not be oblique motion; 2) a pedal tone, where there is genuine oblique motion; and 3) an octave leap, in which case there is no tone repetition and no oblique motion. I agree that categories 1 and 3 can be confused for one another in analysis, but they are basically different voice leading situations. It is difficult for me to imagine a hypothetical configuration of notes on the page where purely rhythmic note repetitions would be the critical factor in interpreting the voice leading.
@@JacobGran My 3) was actually referring to any leap, not necessarily an octave. I think that for a nonsustaining instrument like a harpsichord, for example, situation 2), the pedal tone, can hardly be achieved without repetitions. So let's say you have a low base note at the beginning of the bar, followed by some chords that may suggest a pedal (first and last one consonant with the base note, the rest isn't). I guess some theorists would just call this a pedal and be done, but I think that's incorrect. It's only a pedal if it sounds like one, otherwise it's a bass leap. And on an instrument like the harpsichord, whether or not the note is repeated could determine if it's the one or the other. Of course, factors like the note value chosen by the composer can also give away his intended analysis, but in general, I think it's the audible impression of the passage that's most important. And I believe that this is affected by whether or not repeated notes are present. To be fair, I don't have a good musical example for this situation off the top of my head, so maybe it's not a real issue, just something that came to my mind when I heard your explanation.
@@SpaghettiToaster yes I think we agree. The example you’ve chosen depends upon the instrument, which is why I said it is a compositional decision based on orchestration rather than voice leading. The same pedal tone could be performed without the need for tone repetitions by an organ or voices, etc.
Aren't figured bass symbols abbreviated so you don't get to see all the intervals as you have written, in which case wouldnt it be very hard to track the progress of all the melodic lines unless the full intervals were listed?
Yes, figures were often abbreviated for performance/continuo realization, but if an author like CPE Bach wanted to explain the voice leading of a certain passage they could be as detailed or as brief as they thought was appropriate.
It doesn't matter so much which voice has the CF. Let's say we have four voices: Bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano. Any fourth formed between the Bass and any of the other three voices has to be treated as a dissonance (passing tone, suspension, or neighbor note) in strict counterpoint. But fourths formed between the upper voices -- Tenor, Alto, or Soprano -- are treated like imperfect consonances.
Can passing chords occur on the downbeat of a measure? From a strict definition of passing tones, it seems to me the answer is no, but from your PDF exercises, it seems possible? Thank you Dr. Gran.
Absolutely; accented passing tones are not abnormal at all in free composition, which is really the domain we are talking about in thoroughbass. One would not occur in a combined species counterpoint exercise, though. One frequently sees accented passing chords as the "cadential 6/4" chord, which can be labeled in Roman numeral analysis in several different ways. I would guess that the dissonant sixth and fourth are just as often produced by accented passing motion as they are by suspensions.
I'm really loving the videos! I study music composition in Brazil and your courses have been imensily helpfull and inspirational! My university is more focused in the education of performers, so all the topics, from counterpoint to harmony, are too superficial to be realistic used in real compositional and creative scenarios. Altough I'm majoring composition, my composition teacher is not very good teaching technique. You are making a big difference in my education and in my musical path. Thank you so much!
Concordo com você! Saudações!
Dr. Gran - very nice video, you're covering a lot of material in a short time. Humble suggestion - have each visual supported by an audio excerpt. The viewer who is knowledgable enough to auditate all these examples probably already knows the material, whereas students who would benefit from this knowledge won't be able to hear this in their heads, but will almost certainly not make it though the whole video without the stimulation of supporting audio excerpts.
I was better about this when I first started making videos, but for some reason I've gotten lazy with including audio clips for all of the diagrams. Good tip!
@@JacobGran Whoever doesn't make it through the video doesn't really want to learn it :)
I personally love that the simple examples have no audio, it forces me to try to first audiate them - and sometimes check with my keyboard.
Wonderful video, Mr. Gran! I've really enjoyed every video I've watched from your tonal voice leading series, as they've encouraged me to break the infamous "blank page syndrome" like nothing else, and thus I've dared to compose my own music (mostly "free" counterpoint anyway, although I'm more aware of every action I do, and I come back to your tonal voice leading playlist when in doubt). Kudos for the popular music examples on this one! 😎
*Jacob Gran* Really ! Awesome and good stuff Dear...♦♦♦♦♦♦
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hi, I just have a quick question regarding voice leading. I've always been told that in a 4 part chorale for example every voice has to move as little as possible, but in single line counterpoint and also in this video (especially the voice exchange) it seems possible to have leaps whereas thats kind of a last resort in chorales. Are these different styles or is counterpoint treated a little differently than a chorale? Thanks in advance!
Great question with a complicated answer but I’ll try my best. In thoroughbass and later “keyboard harmony” textbooks, the student is told what the chords are and needs to find a particular realization, so the advice is to keep the fingers on common tones and to pick nearby notes of the adjacent chords. But in species counterpoint, we are only given the melody of the cantus firmus, and so we get to choose the chords that provide the best voice leading. It’s like two ways down the same street. In strict counterpoint (which was very much choral/vocal based instead of keyboard based) the emphasis was to choose chord progressions that allow for multiple independent melodies that are each just as interesting as the cantus firmus, which meant leaps and voice crossings and other attention grabbing things.
Wow I never knew that you have to avoid 4ths on the upbeat if the bass doesn't move. Gre33 video
Actually I should not have said they shouldn’t be used at all. Fourths can be used on the upbeat as long as they are approached and left by step as a passing tone (as we see in the chord progression at the beginning of the video and in the example at 17:16). They just have to be correctly treated as a dissonance.
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Dr. Gran, the example you display in the Conclusion section have a base harmonic rhythm of changing harmony twice a measure, in contrast to one per measure in your two-voice examples. My question is how harmonic rhythm is treated in contrapuntal writings. Are they treated as a mere by-product arose from the melodies and number of voices that I do not have to pay special attention?
Hello Doctor, I was wondering about notation systems used to compare chords played simultaneously with other chords. Here you present slash notation as one way of showing the intention of the passing chord under the I-ii-V-I. Though I was wondering if their was an analog to thorough bass notation where from the numbers presented one can determine the relation of one chord over another. I know in jazz notation they use things like CM7+9b12 to describe complex chord shapes, but that doesn't tell me much about the intended construction C major plus B minor. I've seen a variant of slash notation where the bass tone actually describes a chord to be played under the main chord, but that too doesn't explain dissonant or consonant relationships like counterpoint does. Is their a form of notation that allows for one to construct chords and then place them on top of each other and notate that as the construction?
That's an interesting question. I don't know of any kind of notation that would do that, but of course we could invent a kind of slash notation that indicates a combination of chord qualities (like CM/Bm, or some such thing) if the context required it.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Hi Jacob,
another fantastic video. Just a question regarding the pedal point at the start of the video:
I can see that most of the dissonances can be explained as passing notes, but what about the C note which starts on the second chord (642)? This is a 2nd so is a dissonance, but has not been prepared in the previous chord. On the face of it, it looks like it could be explained as some sort of retardation, resolving upwards to 3, but its lack of preparation means that its not that simple?
ed
Great question, Ed. The ambiguity comes from my chosen realization of the bass figures; I started with a three-note chord moving to a four-note chord, so that additional voice seems to just pop out of nowhere. Unlike in strict counterpoint, the number of voices in thoroughbass is left to the discretion of the continuo player, and in free composition it is left to the composer. With the first B-flat chord in fifth position, the C can't be introduced by B-flat without creating parallel fifths with the line that goes F - G. But for any other initial hand position for the B-flat chord, the note C in the second chord will be introduced and resolved as a passing dissonance. I chose the realization that I did because I wanted the F - G - A - B-flat line in the top voice for clarity, but I needed to avoid those parallel fifths.
@@JacobGran Hi Jacob!
'But for any other initial hand position for the B-flat chord, the note C in the second chord will be introduced and resolved as a passing dissonance. '
just a bit confused about what you mean by 'hand position'. I can see the problem re parallell 5ths. When you talk about the hand position, are you essentially talking about the inversion/ pattern of notes from top to bottom? If so, if the first chord's D note lead to the C in the second chord, would this be a kind of auxiliary note dissonance , as the overall motion is D-C-D. if we came to the C in the second chord from F, then I'm not sure how this would be a passing dissonance?
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding!
Ed
From what I can see, the difference between your explanations/exercises and the example at the beginning from Bob Dylans song is that those passing chords in Jokerman all have the bass note in them for each chord as opposed to having one long sustained bass note for all the chords. For me, there is a big difference playing the bass note on each chord as opposed to just playing one long bass note with passing chords on the up beats. You mention something about this in your video but I am not sure I understood you. Are you saying that it is the same thing having one whole note bass CF with the dissonant chords on the upbeats as having the bass play for the up beats as well? The way I see it, having passing chords on the up beat only while keeping the bass on the downbeats you get a much milder dissonance, almost like with suspension dissonances which really work a lot of the time because they are not struck at the same time as the dissonant interval. I could be wrong of course so please enlighten me :)
Great question. You are exactly right to say that the tone repetitions make a musical difference, but the question is whether that difference is within the voice leading or lies somewhere else. Imagine a measure of a third species exercise that goes like this:
Ctpt: | G A B C |
CF: | C |
and compare it to an example with the CF whole note broken into rearticulated quarter notes, like this:
Ctpt: | G A B C |
CF: | C C C C |
All we need to do to change the above example into the model from the video is to keep the same rhythmic proportion but stretch it out over several measures. The four measures of this phrase have the same pattern of stresses that each beat would have within a measure of common time, which is sometimes referred to as Hypermeter:
Ctpt: | G | A | B | C |
CF: | C | C | C | C |
This might look like a 1:1 rhythmic proportion that breaks the rules of first species (the 1:1 dissonant interval of a seventh in the third measure). But rearticulating a stationary tone does not change the underlying voice leading; the oblique motion (whether within the measure or across the phrase) is best understood as third species, and I think it presents itself to our ears that way as well. Similarly, one of the ways that composers can create suspensions is through a tone repetition, not just through syncopation. On instruments that don't have much sustaining power, like a piano or a mandolin, tone repetitions become a very important concern for orchestration, style, and expression, but not for the underlying voice leading.
This was sort of rambling but I hope it clarifies my way of thinking.
@@JacobGran "On instruments that don't have much sustaining power, like a piano or a mandolin, tone repetitions become a very important concern for orchestration, style, and expression, but not for the underlying voice leading". I'm not sure you can say that. It depends heavily on context. Imagine you have a slow harpsichord piece. There is a low bass note at the beginning, with subsequent bass notes being in a higher register for the next seven beats. This can mean one of three things: 1) The low note is in fact the true bass note and a part of the subsequent chords and should be analyzed as part of the voice leading as you have described. On the harpsichord, this would only work if the subsequent chords clearly imply that note as their bass note, perhaps doubling it in a higher voice, since the sustain has long worn off. 2) The low note is a pedal tone, in which case it would almost necessarily have to be repeated to be perceived as such, since the subsequent chords may not contain it at all and the listener would just hear the harmonies created in the upper voices. 3) The bass does really leap and the low note has no special significance past its sounding duration. All three do occur in music, don't they?
Yes, I should have been clearer in that last sentence: my point is not that tone repetitions are always superfluous to the voice leading (they do occur in first species counterpoint, for instance), but that there is a difference between tone repetitions that lead to genuine oblique motion and purely rhythmic note repetitions that could happen for compositional reasons other than voice leading.
I agree that your three situations do occur in real music, but I am failing to see how that relates to the topic of how tone repetitions affect voice leading. You have given three different voice leading situations: 1) what Schenker would call a "register transfer," or "coupling," which does involve a tone repetition but requires the complicating factor of register, and where there may or may not be oblique motion; 2) a pedal tone, where there is genuine oblique motion; and 3) an octave leap, in which case there is no tone repetition and no oblique motion. I agree that categories 1 and 3 can be confused for one another in analysis, but they are basically different voice leading situations. It is difficult for me to imagine a hypothetical configuration of notes on the page where purely rhythmic note repetitions would be the critical factor in interpreting the voice leading.
@@JacobGran My 3) was actually referring to any leap, not necessarily an octave. I think that for a nonsustaining instrument like a harpsichord, for example, situation 2), the pedal tone, can hardly be achieved without repetitions. So let's say you have a low base note at the beginning of the bar, followed by some chords that may suggest a pedal (first and last one consonant with the base note, the rest isn't). I guess some theorists would just call this a pedal and be done, but I think that's incorrect. It's only a pedal if it sounds like one, otherwise it's a bass leap. And on an instrument like the harpsichord, whether or not the note is repeated could determine if it's the one or the other. Of course, factors like the note value chosen by the composer can also give away his intended analysis, but in general, I think it's the audible impression of the passage that's most important. And I believe that this is affected by whether or not repeated notes are present. To be fair, I don't have a good musical example for this situation off the top of my head, so maybe it's not a real issue, just something that came to my mind when I heard your explanation.
@@SpaghettiToaster yes I think we agree. The example you’ve chosen depends upon the instrument, which is why I said it is a compositional decision based on orchestration rather than voice leading. The same pedal tone could be performed without the need for tone repetitions by an organ or voices, etc.
Aren't figured bass symbols abbreviated so you don't get to see all the intervals as you have written, in which case wouldnt it be very hard to track the progress of all the melodic lines unless the full intervals were listed?
Yes, figures were often abbreviated for performance/continuo realization, but if an author like CPE Bach wanted to explain the voice leading of a certain passage they could be as detailed or as brief as they thought was appropriate.
@@JacobGran Thank you for your reply.
If the CF is in the soprano part, does that mean that the half notes can never form a fourth?
It doesn't matter so much which voice has the CF. Let's say we have four voices: Bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano. Any fourth formed between the Bass and any of the other three voices has to be treated as a dissonance (passing tone, suspension, or neighbor note) in strict counterpoint. But fourths formed between the upper voices -- Tenor, Alto, or Soprano -- are treated like imperfect consonances.
Great Video👌
Can passing chords occur on the downbeat of a measure? From a strict definition of passing tones, it seems to me the answer is no, but from your PDF exercises, it seems possible? Thank you Dr. Gran.
Absolutely; accented passing tones are not abnormal at all in free composition, which is really the domain we are talking about in thoroughbass. One would not occur in a combined species counterpoint exercise, though.
One frequently sees accented passing chords as the "cadential 6/4" chord, which can be labeled in Roman numeral analysis in several different ways. I would guess that the dissonant sixth and fourth are just as often produced by accented passing motion as they are by suspensions.
👍🙂
First.
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