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- Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!umeecs!zip.eecs.umich.edu!fields
- From: fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields)
- Subject: Re: // 5ths & 8ves
- Message-ID: <1992Dec29.142923.8042@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
- Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Mr. News)
- Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor
- References: <1h7qgbINNt2f@agate.berkeley.edu> <w2N9VB2w165w@dorsai.com> <1992Dec29.021154.25210@cucs5.cs.cuhk.hk>
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 14:29:23 GMT
- Lines: 46
-
- In article <1992Dec29.021154.25210@cucs5.cs.cuhk.hk> bmtong@cs.cuhk.hk (Tong Bo-Ming) writes:
- >idealord@dorsai.com (Jeff Harrington) writes:
- >
- >>Wait a minute, you're talking orchestration, whether by the use of
- >>octaves in the piano or in the orchestra. That's a totally different
- >>thing from voice leading.
- >>
- >>Matt's got some good points. Ultimately, anyone who thinks an Alberti
- >>bass never bends with the melody doesn't know the literature :-).
- >>
- >
- >>Jeff Harrington
- >>IdEAL ORDER
- >>idealord@dorsai.com
- >
- >How do we distinguish between doubling and orchestration ?
-
- I think the distinction is between counterpoint and orchestration.
- Between things that I consider separate voices, I personally just DON'T
- have parallel octaves. Between melody lines that might be orchestrating a
- single melody, I have A LOT of parallel octaves. If you've got parts that
- are moving along more or less independently, but suddenly in the middle
- they just slip into one isolated instance of parallel octaves, you might
- consider adjusting one of them so this doesn't happen. In the case of the
- texture you described [arppegiated descant, slow-moving bass, featured melody
- in the alto], you could simply permute the order of pitches in the arppegiation
- pattern.
-
- To summarize this rather slippery idea with Yet Another Metaphor,
- think of a 3-d saddle-point. This locus is unstable, and objects on
- it prefer either to shift on the x axis downward, or on the y axis
- upward. Similarly, many folks prefer to experience parallel octaves
- as a constant feature of a melody or a banished feature of two
- melodies. If you make it a rare feature of two melodies, then those
- few instances are unstable in the ears of a classically-trained
- musician.
-
- Look at the two-voice fugue in E-minor from Book I of the Well Tempered
- Clavier by J.S.Bach. There are two separate measures where abruptly he
- shifts to parallel octaves, i.e. one voice doubled--and in each case,
- there's not just one isolated instance of parallel octaves, but TWELVE of
- them in a row. These surprising measures also mark key points in the
- tonal rhetoric of the composition (I don't have the fugue handy, so I can't
- tell you further details).
-
-
-