tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post1719876100371660513..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Stravinsky: Technique and Theory, part 1Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-74050173454053597092017-07-25T07:50:43.603-05:002017-07-25T07:50:43.603-05:00Steven, thanks. Glad to hear you are reading them,...Steven, thanks. Glad to hear you are reading them, so no need for repetitive mentions!<br /><br />Will, the history of tunings and scales and temperaments is a pretty complex one, for sure.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-36016652052811876282017-07-24T22:06:45.877-05:002017-07-24T22:06:45.877-05:00Oh and now I remember more clearly why I wrote abo...Oh and now I remember more clearly why I wrote above that the 5th was more important in medieval music and later the third came to be "dominant." I got that in my readings a few months ago on the history of scales and tunings and temperaments. The Pythagorean scale basically spiraled up through perfect fifths and the higher steps would just keep getting cut in half to bring them back into the appropriate octave. Then as more modern music of the renaissance and baroque came, the third became the more perfect (or at least important and used) interval and scales were more defined by thirds. After all, octaves of doubling frequencies don't easily mesh with divisions by 3 or 7 etc so commas had to put SOMEWHERE....Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-51686253499255476042017-07-24T18:54:58.337-05:002017-07-24T18:54:58.337-05:00FWIW, I read these posts avidly, but as I know nex...FWIW, I read these posts avidly, but as I know next to zilch about the subject, it doesn't usually occur to me to comment. (I would happily add a 'thanks for writing this' to each post, but I imagine that would get tedious, fast.) So please do keep posting these -- I really appreciate all the effort you put in. I've in fact been listening to Schubert for the first time this week and just the couple of paragraphs you have on him here were very useful, and a good springboard Stevennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-88732244244674232042017-07-24T16:01:13.184-05:002017-07-24T16:01:13.184-05:00Yes, exactly! A lot of music theory is simply maki...Yes, exactly! A lot of music theory is simply making people aware of things that they already know instinctively just from playing music.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-13890004623029871062017-07-24T15:53:28.533-05:002017-07-24T15:53:28.533-05:00Thank you Bryan. Reading your last comment felt li...Thank you Bryan. Reading your last comment felt like a bit of a breakthrough for me. I suppose I already instinctively understood that certain horizontal line passages were outlining a particular harmony, but you're opening my eyes to the fact that there are a succession of such passages and they are progressing through a series of harmonizations, I suppose in a way roughly comparable to what we call chord progressions in a modern song?Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-67856997295785198152017-07-24T14:10:56.756-05:002017-07-24T14:10:56.756-05:00Oh no, there is loads of harmony in those pieces. ...Oh no, there is loads of harmony in those pieces. Think of it like this: melody is the horizontal aspect and harmony the vertical aspect. That melodic line is outlining or suggesting a particular harmony. Then in the next measure or phrase there is a different harmony suggested. The movement from one harmony to the next is the harmonic progression.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-62487657339819321122017-07-24T11:32:59.563-05:002017-07-24T11:32:59.563-05:00OK Bryan, but take some "melodic" violin...OK Bryan, but take some "melodic" violin music like the sonatas of Biber, which I call "melodic" because, despite occasional double and triple stops, are for the most part a single horizontal line, a series of notes, ie, a string of melodic intervals. Yet much of it is pretty close to straight scales, with an occasional skipped note or accidental like a b flat, and probably some of the skipwise intervals could be heard as sideways chords, ie, arpeggios. I say this because I hear so much "harmony" in those melodic lines and not much genuine (free and arbitrary like the romantics) melody. AND I happen to like that early baroque stuff where melodic intervals strike me as scales and chords, perhaps boring and formulaic and predictable to excitable romantics, but calming and reassuring to aesthetic conservatives like me.Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-14070312639438932032017-07-24T08:02:26.250-05:002017-07-24T08:02:26.250-05:00Will, thanks for just leaving a comment! My Stravi...Will, thanks for just leaving a comment! My Stravinsky posts, to which I devote a lot of effort, attract almost no comments, so I sometimes wonder if anyone is reading them.<br /><br />They are very technical posts, I know. The truth is that most musicians, even ones who have spent their lives playing in well-known professional orchestras, are not highly trained in music theory. Nor do they have to be. The only people in the music world who are, are composers, theorists and musicologists and I'm afraid that I have to confess that I belong to at least two of those groups! So don't feel bad if I lost you in this post.<br /><br />You just missed one thing, really: what I am talking about here is not melodic intervals, but harmony, chords built on particular notes of the scale. You are quite correct, in Medieval music the typical melodic interval was NOT the fifth. More typically were close intervals like the second and third. Later on, in the Baroque and Classical periods, melodies were often fashioned out of notes from the triad, so typically thirds with the occasional fourth or fifth. Have a listen to Mozart Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for a typical example.<br /><br />But this whole post is about harmony, not melody. What you should do is pick up a basic music theory text and read about how melodies are hamonised. That should do it!Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-50626340184222183292017-07-23T21:38:28.201-05:002017-07-23T21:38:28.201-05:00OK Bryan I have to comment because --what are the ...OK Bryan I have to comment because --what are the odds?-- I just put on a CD of Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Schubert's Symphony #9 (in Stockholm in 1943) and now come to this article to read about it! WHAT ARE THE ODDS? In this case, 1:1.<br /><br />Anyway, in these fortunate circumstances, I hear the example as I read and now write.<br /><br />As I am an amateur future-musician with 27 months of self-taught violin experience and only a college music appreciation course about 30 years ago, your article goes a bit over my head. But I've been studying enough to at least reach for it, to try to get SOMETHING out of your article. So here's what a musical kindergartener gets:<br /><br />1) The seemingly odd interval of a "flat submediant" (flat sixth) is not so weird at all when viewed the other direction --as a major third below the tonic.<br /><br />2) Don't I recall that in ancient and medieval music the fifth was the interval most used, and it was in the renaissance era that thirds started to become important in melodic lines? But my memory must be fuzzy, since when I think of Gregorian music those intervals often seem much closer than fifths, probably a lot of it could even be said to move stepwise rather than skipwise, no? (I realize in the internet age, there is no excuse for stupid questions as I could research this quickly and write with more pretension --but here I'm being candid as if we're talking across a bar table without devices.<br /><br />3) No doubt in the romantic there is more and more liberation of melodic lines from the kinds of constricting rules of earlier ages. I write this in a positive tone but since my deepest comfort is in the early baroque, where my amateur non-technical understanding can only say "it seems melody has not yet come to full freedom and dominance (there's that word again), but rather melodic lines often strike me as arpeggios or at least having a lot of chordal qualities rather than whimsical independence."<br /><br />OK Bryan, that's all I've got on this, I'm just not technical enough to really talk to you but at least we're listening to the same music!Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.com