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An interval is the distance between two notes. During the plain chant era there were descriptions of how notes moved, which was by step or by leap. The distance between notes wasn't a consideration.

That's incorrect, David. The pre-and post-Palestrina era is the very embodiment of such evidence. The ideal at the time was to achieve perfect sonority (which is why the nomenclature of the day was full of such affectations as the term "perfection", referring to perfect octaves, fourths, fifths, and because of "just" intonation, thirds and sixths).

Fourths and fifths were deemed dissonant at the time, whereas unisons, thirds and sixths were given preferential treatment.

Well I can't really argue with that as I'm not 340+ years old! =)

So you've never heard any modern composer, well known or not well known, anywhere in the world, compose convincing baroque music? I'm certain I've heard some talented amateurs compose very good baroque music. They aren't going to sound exactly like bach nor should they. But it's definitely baroque.

Also, while I can't learn directly from a living "real" baroque composer, they certainly left behind a gigantic pile of music for me and other like minded amateurs to learn from. So you're right, my process may end up totally different from the way they really did things back then...but why would I want it to be exactly the same?

So, since Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and so forth are all dead, does that mean my father is not a "real" boogie woogie player because he didn't learn to play in the same era?

Yes, when I initially just said "thirds," I really meant "thirds and their inversions." So thirds, sixths, tenths and their even wider equivalents.

Also, my original post is an over simplification. I think it is clear that the baroque composers enjoyed dissonance as well, but they, perhaps subjectively, decided to always treat dissonance as something that "arouses the passions" and consonance as something that "calms them." (I recall reading a similar statement in CPE Bach's True Art of playing Keyboard Instruments). This is where the objective "finding consonant intervals in nature" starts to blur into the subjective. I think if I were to imagine myself as someone experimenting with musical intervals back then, I'd probably find consonant intervals more pleasing than dissonant ones *at first*. I might, because of religion or what not, believe that the consonant intervals were placed there by God. I might derive more pleasure from them as a result of all of these things. Then, I might proceed to consider dissonance as something that I would want to always tend dowards consonance. To me, all this seems like a natural, human reaction to initial discovery of sounds in nature. Today of course, we can let dissonances stand on their own and be interesting entities in and of themselves. But back then, they kept that "initial reaction" to consonance and dissonance as a guiding principle for their composition.

To me, that "initial reaction" seems to be one that I share. I love the sound of dissonance resolving into consonance (or proceeding from consonance to dissonance and then anticipating resolution at some point), it gives me a lot of pleasure. More so than compositions which are based entirely on standing, non functional dissonant intervals. Or compositions that simply ignore the interplay between consonance and dissonance. Sometimes there are composers which, while composing, do not pay attention to this, but still produce an interplay between consonance and dissonance that I enjoy.

It took me a long time to finally arrive there after listening very broadly, and indeed sometimes enjoying a lot of the weird modern stuff. I think the furthest I can still go and enjoy it is late scriabin...when you get up to schoenberg and all the rest I don't understand it. I like to improvise it sometimes, that can be fun, but as music I don't value it.

Are you defining intervals as the distance between two notes that are sung at the same time, i.e. harmonic intervals?

If there are two stones which are 2 feet apart, and if I stand on those two stones at the same time, then my feet are 2 feet apart. If I hop from the first stone to the second stone, then I have hopped 2 feet. The 2 feet refers to that distance, and that distance doesn't change. That is how I understand interval and how it's taught over here.

When the music was sung in plain chant, they sang along the gamut, and the notes of that gamut were spaced a certain distance from each other. They sang one note, and then the next note, and by doing so they traveled a given distance, which I understand to be the movement of an interval. When you write of step or leap, I have always understood that to also involve a certain distance that is being traveled. In a modern major scale, when you move from Do to Mi, then you have skipped Re, but there is also a distance from Do to Mi which you have traveled.

When I read that there were no intervals, then I read that to mean that there was no distance between two notes even melodically, and that made no sense, and precisely why I got stuck on that sentence. But if you say there were no *harmonic intervals*, because no two notes were ever sung at the same time, then that does make sense.

We are taught to think of harmonic and melodic interval, then do you consider that to be a misteaching? This is the point where I am stuck with your explanation. It DOES make sense if you are thinking of interval as only concerning when two notes are produced at the same time.

Yes, Keystring, I was referring to harmonic intervals.

The monks would rise at the crack of dawn for Matins, sing plain chant for a while from little books containing 4-stave scores, go do their morning chores while a few of their number prepared some gruel, had breakfast, then went out working. They didn't think anything about the music, as it was a devotional matter like prayer.

Matins was part of the Liturgy, and during such events the public would enter the abbey. The monks were hidden from sight by curtains and/or a heavy latticework.

The harmonic/melodic aspects of music are indeed taught in a muddled way today. I've been quite taken aback at how poorly these subjects are taught in most modern universities.

BBB, the difference between Palestrina's and Bach's counterpoint is dissonance. Palestrina and his contemporaries used none, Bach's is full of 4ths, 5ths, diatonic 7ths, accented passing notes, pedals at various intervals, suspensions and appoggiaturas. The beauty of the sound of Baroque music is produced through the liberal use of dissonance, just as the etherially sublime sound of Palestrina's music is produced by the utter lack of dissonance.

Because of this thread I actually listened to a bit of Palestrina today on youtube, I had never done so before. This is certainly a learning experience. Wouldn't you agree, however, that even with the liberal use of dissonance in Bach's time, there was still this strong tendency towards things aligning in triads, or moving in parallel thirds and sixths etc. In other words---the baroque composers found more creative ways to accentuate the satisfaction of aligning on thirds (triads) with dissonance. It wasn't until much later that dissonant chords began standing on their own for longer and longer periods, until they were no longer functional chords.

From what little I listened to of Palestrina, it sounds like he does use dissonance, but resolves it much more quickly than one often hears in later music. The effect is much smoother. I'm also fascinated by the intonation of human voices singing this kind of music, it is really gorgeous.

That clears everything for me. Thanks.

OK, thanks! What are some historical source readings for this?

Regarding "real baroque": My point is that we modern people can't un-hear Mozart, Mahler, the Beatles, and Boulez. Everything we make is influenced by our environment, and by what has come before us.


Regarding your father: Player vs. composer is an important distinction. Your father's boogie woogie style, in his own compositions, is a little different from theirs (I expect), even if he plays Pete Johnson's music just the way Johnson himself did. Imagine the huge difference there could be in new boogie woogie music two hundred years from now! (Though there might be less difference because that style is not so convoluted & complex as baroque.)

The best thing to do, David, is find a book or two on Palestrina that goes into his music in detail. I studied his music in university well over thirty years ago, and the only material we had to work with was notes taken in class and the music itself.

This looks like it might be promising:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Sixteenth-Century-Counterpoint-Palestrinas/dp/1880157071

BBB, that's exactly it- Bach counterpoint assimilated Palestrina's counterpoint. That's what is meant by the term "classical" music. The basis of the Western Classical musical tradition is the underlying classicism, which continues unbroken from its earliest origins to the present day. The classicism in question follows the rules of taxonomy, and has its analogue in Western thought. Like DNA, nothing simply pops into being. Everything is contingent upon the existing state of the form. In a very literal sense, Western classical music evolves over time.

Classical music is like art and ballet and the English language. They are forms built by assimilation, through which a line (tradition) is drawn. A few forms came together at the beginning, a revelation like Pythagoras' realisation that all the modes were part of a single system took place (the realisation of the underlying classicism), and the process of assimilation and evolution continued on from there. Newer forms were assimilated after being fitted into the scheme of things, the way a taxonomist fits a newly discovered life-form into the Tree of Life.

This isn't directly related to this discussion but covers many points and some most here have never thought of. Composer John Winsor has made his book Breaking the Sound Barrier available for public consumption. I have found much of what he has to say enlightening and instructive. He covers the development of music theory and composition from pre-organum to the present. I highly recommend reading it for anyone with an interest in composition. Don't expect to get through it in a day.

http://www.john-winsor.com/

Ok, I might be a bit off, since I don't have tons of time to read every reply (soooo sorry about that), but...

"Rules" in theory/harmony/counterpoint/etc are there for the simplest of reasons: Some people analized what the composers of the past were doing and broke them down to rules. If you want to 'copy' that style then you have to follow the rules. If not, by all means do whatever you please.

It's simple as that. (and the parallel fifths in the Ravel concerto in G sound OH SO AMAZING, btw...).

As far as aesthetics are concerned, I'm not exactly sure on what to say: Yes, aesthetics can be taught (and have been taught for so many years, regardless if we're talking about composers or performers). And yes, personal filters play a hugely important role in what our output is. The question of why something sounds good has to do with our own ears (who else knows how WE listen to things?), with our own taste in music (our parents were putting Marilyn Manson when we were young and now that's all we can hear), our training (our piano teacher was a b * i * tz...) and so on.

Universal rules do seem to be somewhere in there, at least based on western music. The minute, though, you step outside the western modes and styles, you enter a world of microtuning, weird time signatures (traditional songs in Greece have 7/8, 9/8, 23/8 (!!!) and 15/16 (!!!!!) as time signatures for example and the same applies for most of Balcan). Is anyone capable of putting THAT down to universal rules?

Thanks for the link! I shall certainly read it!

You really should have read what came before, Nikolas, because that's dead wrong. The rules were there from the beginning, and evolved right along with the music. In fact, in many cases they were there before the music- that the music evolved out of the rules. For example, Pythagoras unified the modes (what few there were), which in the process created new modes, which later were studied in terms of possibilities, in keeping with the underlying classicism of the day, before people actually began using them.

Likewise, the rules of voice-leading came from plain-chant, before there was polyphony (multi-voice writing).

I'm sorry but I deadly dissagree!

First of I find that not reading the entire thread has little to do with me being wrong or not, or with what I said. I just mentioned that to make sure that if I was repeating what someone else said there was this simple reason.

Other than that I don't write tonal music and I hardly use any 'rules' (parallel fifths and the such), or voice leading as you might know it. Of course everything evolves in time and of course everyone works with some kind of 'rules' (otherwise we would be talking about million monkeys hitting the keys of the piano), but it remains that the rules mentioned by BBB seemed to go towards aesthetic rules of the past, which are there for the specific aesthetics and not in general...

So in this example... If I disregard the 'rules' of voice leading I'll either:
a. End up in something awful (highly doubt that).
b. End up in a different aesthetic that the rules lead me to.
c. don't know/don't care.

The rules ARE there to produce a somewhat defined aesthetic result! Unless we are talking about some other kind of rules, in which case I do appologize...

Nikolas, you should really go back and read. Your comments are incorrect, and sticking to your guns and not making a single attempt to listen to the facts is only serving to derail this thread.

The rules as they are taught now are intended to apply toward common practice tonality. Since this style of composition is generally frowned upon in academic circles it is not what's taught in college composition classes. The reality is parallel fifths have a very strong and particular sound. They tend to be be noticeable, therefore inadvertent use is a mistake that will be noticed. However, if you use them deliberately then indulge the sound by making them obvious.

Of course I haven't always taken this advice in my own music as there are ways to disguise parallel fifths (in a rich harmonic environment with lots of 7ths, 9ths etc, they tend to get lost). It's a bit like disguising ginger with garlic. My point is you should always be thinking about what you're doing and know why you're doing it.

To use a painting metaphor, a common thing done now is mixing media, a bit of watercolor here, some acrylic there, some charcoal elsewhere. It's easy to do such mixed media badly, the challenge is to make it look like it all belongs together. One concept might be a picture that starts as a charcoal sketch on one side and progresses through watercolors to full on oil paint by the other side. It's an obvious concept, that expresses evolution and it has probably already been done many times, but it's a concept that's supported by the technique. And that's really the bottom line. It's one thing to break the rules, but in so doing to you accomplish something expressive? If the answer is yes then what's the problem?

There will always be idiot critics like the one who complained that Cesar Franck used an English Horn in his Symphony and everyone knows an English Horn doesn't belong in a symphony. It's funny, because history has judged that symphony rather well. It's one of the more popular in the orchestral repertoire.

Parallel 5ths are an exceptional example. Composers stopped using them when they fell out of fashion, which is one issue attached to them. Their second major issue is that, when it comes to rules of voice-leading, they are best avoided in contrapuntal writing, which is where they were originally excluded.

As a convention they fell out of favour because to the generation of composers immediately following the era of parallel harmonies, they sounded old-fashioned.

As a rule in voice-leading, primarily in counterpoint, they were avoided because parallel movement of that type interferes with the independence of the individual voice to which that movement belongs.

In contrapuntal terms, parallelism of any kind detracts from individual melody. This is not a bad thing when intended in an harmonic context, because many composers use an "organ-stop" technique when writing for full orchestra, whereby parts move in parallel, using instruments and voicings to create false harmonics. Bartok and Ravel were masters of the technique. There are examples to be heard in both Concerto For Orchestra and Bolero.