4 part-writing exercise - need evaluation

[IncarnateX]

Oh! Well. I thought it was his exercise still. Did not check the reference your quote. My bad. It's the Bach Piece? Well, then any broken "traditional" rules make even more sense. Principle applies: At the end of the day, author makes the final decision.

[IncarnateX]

But you don't know that. How would you?

And let us us drop the ad hominems, shall we? No one benefit from those, least of all rbarata.

[fmr]

To them, rules ARE guidelines, though they state them as rules for pedagogical reasons.

100%! I've said 'guidelines' for the past 30 years, and so few hear the message! :0)

Maybe it was a mistake on their part to be so 'definite'?

I don't think it was a mistake. Noone that's serious about music and had studied Fux ever refrained from doing what they think is the best "musical choice" to their compositions. And I never teached (and wasn't taught, or did ever knew anyone teaching) these "rules" were sacrosanct and unbreakable.

They are "brain training" to give the "composer to be" skills to make better and more informed choices.

[IncarnateX]

Have never met any teacher that said rules cannot be broken but I have met quite a few students and was one of them myself in the beginning. You have to get into the stuff to realise it is not the case. That students naively think so in the beginning may certainly be due to the "strictness" of exercises. But they are exactly that: exercises...and good ones too, imo.

[ChamMusic]

by using a passing note, but that creates a movement with two parallel seconds between the tenor and the bass ...this passes almost unnoticeable.

As you say...'unnoticeable'.

And also perfectly acceptable in this context as the passing not is a fleeting moment on a weakly accented part of the bar. (Might've been more of an issue if Bass / Soprano)?

Bach used passing notes and suspended notes (other devices as well such a chordal leaps and anticipations) quite cunningly at times to disguise / lessen the impact of parallels...

[ChamMusic]

To them, rules ARE guidelines, though they state them as rules for pedagogical reasons.

100%! I've said 'guidelines' for the past 30 years, and so few hear the message! :0)

Maybe it was a mistake on their part to be so 'definite'?

I don't think it was a mistake. Noone that's serious about music and had studied Fux ever refrained from doing what they think is the best "musical choice" to their compositions. And I never teached (and wasn't taught, or did ever knew anyone teaching) these "rules" were sacrosanct and unbreakable.

They are "brain training" to give the "composer to be" skills to make better and more informed choices.

Not a mistake as long as there is someone alongside the book to structure and direct the learning, but on their own those pages come across very stridently at times.

[ChamMusic]

Have never met any teacher that said rules cannot be broken but I have met quite a few students and was one of them myself in the beginning. You have to get into the stuff to realise it is not the case. That students naively think so in the beginning may certainly be due to the "strictness" of exercises. But they are exactly that: exercises...and good ones too, imo.

See, I've had the opposite experience once or twice...

I was a young student who pretty early on said 'f**k that rule' I don't like the way it sounds and I want my music to sound like this! :0)

My 'teacher' was not keen...I left and found someone else!:0)

As a composition teacher, I've also had colleagues who were utterly obsessed by the 'rules' and had no flexibility in their approach...they invariably got crap results and moved on! :0)

I do agree though that most teachers are more open-minded, probably because they've been there and moved on to a more free approach themselves.

I have a strong tendency to experiment and ignore any rules...I'm aware of this and rein it in when teaching certain aspects of composition!

[jancivil]

duplication due to hitting quote rather than edit

[jancivil]

Intervals between voices (marked in red the questions I’ll ask about)
- M2 and m7: as far as I know, Bach considered them as dissonances. Did he had any particular treatment for them?
- P5-P5: These are consecutive 5ths but since they keep the same tones can be accepted as only one 5th. Am I correct?
- The chord with the arrow: usually, to find the chord, I consider the first quarter-note (in the alto) but in this case it would be something strange (D-A-E-F#). If I conside the 2nd quarter-note then it’s a D Maj triad with a doubled root.
My question: how should I read this? Does it depends on the ears?

Here is where the difference between part-writing considering the line and straight block chords first appears for you, apparently.

Get used to this. That's a 9-8 or 2-1 suspension with an immediate resolution. There is no D A E F# chord, it's just a D major. Suspension means a note was held over, suspended, from the previous harmony.

I would recommend analyzing the harmony in and of itself in preference to this intervallic analysis voice to voice, if only because there's no real reason for this in isolation and it's a waste of time.

- Aug 4th? Maybe a strategy to increase tension to make the resolution more satisfactory?

All dominant-seventh type harmony contains that. Yes, eg., V is more tense than it would be without it, which is, one supposes, why it's there. This is the absolutely normal (and normative at this juncture) satisfactory resolution.

[jancivil]

Have never met any teacher that said rules cannot be broken but I have met quite a few students and was one of them myself in the beginning. You have to get into the stuff to realise it is not the case. That students naively think so in the beginning may certainly be due to the "strictness" of exercises. But they are exactly that: exercises...and good ones too, imo.

See, I've had the opposite experience once or twice...

My final at CCM, which was brutal, later romantic style (and I was still blazing on the LSD from the night before) I should have gotten 100% on but for a covered fifth in a German 6th resolution (which there was in all probability no way out of), which got 4 pts taken off (I love this anecdote for the following reason); this is known as Mozart fifths, which I didn't know at the time or I will have lobbied the guy for a 100! His markup read "Sounds great, though!"

I had no expectation of being very creative with the part-writing or getting away with ignoring procedure. That said, when I first had a course I would get as much dissonance in there as I could within the rules. And it sounded great. This was a great experience for me because I felt so legit now.

[jancivil]

snip:

Not a mistake as long as there is someone alongside the book to structure and direct the learning, but on their own those pages come across very stridently at times.

I agree with what I had, which was just do part-writing (and have it looked at as music) in preference to looking at a book. I strongly mean this.

[fmr]

My final at CCM, which was brutal, later romantic style (and I was still blazing on the LSD from the night before) I should have gotten 100% on but for a covered fifth in a German 6th resolution (which there was in all probability no way out of), which got 4 pts taken off (I love this anecdote for the following reason); this is known as Mozart fifths, which I didn't know at the time or I will have lobbied the guy for a 100! His markup read "Sounds great, though!"

Well, at least you got the satisfaction to have him recognizing that you DID IT MUSICALLY WELL

[IncarnateX]

4 points? They had a kind of score system relative to type of breaches? What a creativity killer. Okay, I withdraw my teacher confidence statement. I would feel like starting a dissonance rebellion too.

[jancivil]

=passing notes and suspended notes (other devices as well such a chordal leaps and anticipations) quite cunningly at times to disguise / lessen the impact of parallels...

I think focus on 'impact of parallels' misses the forest for the trees. The creativity of the lines, and those are great examples as drivers for the harmony may be closer to Bach's thought. I'm aware of why parallels are avoided (I wholly agree with fmr that harmonic thought vanishes w. parallel fifths) but Bach was well beyond worrying about it I think.

[jancivil]

My final at CCM, which was brutal, later romantic style (and I was still blazing on the LSD from the night before) I should have gotten 100% on but for a covered fifth in a German 6th resolution (which there was in all probability no way out of), which got 4 pts taken off (I love this anecdote for the following reason); this is known as Mozart fifths, which I didn't know at the time or I will have lobbied the guy for a 100! His markup read "Sounds great, though!"

Well, at least you got the satisfaction to have him recognizing that you DID IT MUSICALLY WELL

Oh, honey but did I know that but well already.

He was a great teacher. I even remember his name: James Gallatin. He was a Messiaen fanatic (organist) btw.