On 5 Feb 2007 at 14:29, Christopher Smith wrote: > On 5-Feb-07, at 11:17 AM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > >> Minor thirds could be doubled, at least, more so than major thirds. > >> In most cases, it is the bass note that gets doubled most of the > >> time (first inversion being a notable exception) but the needs of > >> voice leading can cause some rarer note to be doubled gracefully > >> from time to time. You are correct that the leading tone is very > >> resistant to being doubled, more so than any other note. > > > > You can't talk about the results of doubling without considering the > > *bass* of the chord. The traditional doubling rules are different > > for the different inversions, and there are good pragmatic reasons > > for the doubling rules -- in four-part traditional harmony, they > > make for a better sound. Of course, one is absolutely free to > > intentionally violate the rules for effect, and when voice leading > > trumps harmony (e.g., in highly polyphonic music), you'll often find > > them often violated in passing. > > > > But the *bass* is what matters, and it shocks me that nobody has > > mentioned this in answering the question! > > I did! There it is, in the second sentence.
But it's mentioned in the abstract, not even speaking of the inversion of the chord. That's what bothered me about the talk about 1, 4 and 5, that it's all in the abstract. Sure, you're talking about root-position chords, you don't double the third, but with the other inversions, things are different. And it's this lack of discussion of the *relationship* of the third to the other notes that distresses me about the whole discussion. Music is about relationships, not about absolute statements about particular voices in a chord. This is, in my experience, what theory students find difficult, because the permutations are so many once you get into whole chord progressions and espeicially when you attempt to write purely polyphonic lines (as opposed to harmonizing a melody or a bass). I've heard them complain that it's just too complicated, too much of a puzzle. They hate that choices they make in the first chord can lead them to a bad result 3 or 4 or 5 chords later. I remember the same frustration when I started transcribing Parisian organum from reproductions of the original MSS -- it was a complex puzzle and if you got off one place, everything else was messed up. And when you had equally valid choices early on, you might not know until much later that you'd interpreted the rhythm wrong. But after a while I got the hang of it (though I've probably lost it by now!). Notes don't have meaning outside of context (or maybe I should say contexts, plural), and speaking of doubling without talking about invesions and contexts is just not helpful. There are *no* rules or even rules of thumb that apply outside of particular contexts. And that's why I posted -- a mere *mention* of the bass didn't seem to me to be sufficient to put the discussion on the right track, which *always* relates voicing to inversion (at least, in the style we're talking about here, which is the only one in which doubling of thirds is really an issue in the first place). -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
