Re: Unanswered Question #1

On Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:17:24 GMT, "Steve Latham" <llatham@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>
>"David Webber" <dave@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>news:ft9sfv$5j$1$8302bc10@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>> "LJS" <ljschenck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>>
news:b158c822-d0d7-4d93-9d8c-9a0006999698@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>> Yes, the Picardy third or Tierce de Picardie does seem to be an
>> example. It is a chord that borrows from the Major Mode.<
>>
>> It introduces a major third.  In that it was used in pieces in Dorian 
>> mode, before the major/minior prominance we are now used to, it cannot 
>> really be said to "borrow from the major mode".    That is a post-hoc 
>> construction.
>>
>> Dave
>
>Not really David. Or at least let's say while the term for Tierce de 
>Picardie may have existed in the modal era, in the Tonal era, the concept
of 
>borrowing limited itself to the Parallel Major and Minor Modes (modes in 
>this case meaning versions) of a key.
>
> So the major third in a minor tonic, 
>is borrowed from the parallel Major, not from some other "mode".
Likewise, 
>in minor, we could see raised 6 as coming fom a Dorian influence, it is 
>instead not to be considered borrowed at all, but simply part of the
minor 
>system.
>
>Now, interestingly, certainly there's got to be some holdover of modal 
>concepts - b2 from Phrygian is a good example. Furthermore, the chorale 
>harmonizations of modal melodies from Bach seem to show a greater
influence 
>of modality than many other tonal works. But on the whole, the Tonal
system 
>limited itself to two modes - Major and minor, and Secondary keys - so
all 
>borrowing comes from those elements. Mozart was very unlikely thinking
that 
>#4 was coming from Lydian - he was more likely thinking it was coming
from 
>the key of the dominant.  So I'd say any tonal composer, would likely be 
>thinking "I'm borrowing this chord from the Major mode" rather than
thinking 
>it was coming from any other mode, though, the principle is certainly
akin 
>to the earlier principle in modality.

Concepts such as the following weren't the kind of thing people were
talking during the CPP itself:

  Tonal/Tonality
  Parallel Major and Minor
  Borrowing
  Secondary Keys

In Mozart's time Major and minor were still thought of as "Ionian" and
"Aeolian" by many, although there was some debate as to whether the
minor was actually "Aeolian" or in fact "Dorian".

The term "dominant" had been introduced by Rameau in 1722, but his
definition maps to what we now call a 7th chord: for him any 7th chord
was a dominant and any plain consonant triad a was a "tonic". It's
unclear how much affect Rameau's concepts during the period itself.
Elements of the concept of "tonality" begin to arrive around the 1820s
but isn't really defined until the 1850s at least, by which time the
period was more or less over. The idea that Mozart thought in terms of
"borrowing" is not sup****ted by anything I've read.

Which is not to say that Mozart was thinking "modally" at the time,
which was considered to be old fa****oned or suitable only for some
church music. In fact, Mozart would have had little need to theorize
about the music he was writing at all: he'd been hearing the stylistic
usage day in, day out, all his life. He could write nothing that
wasn't CPP. When he taught music he used thoroughbass and also seems
to have taught root progressions as well.

The last paragraph of an article I read yesterday struck me as summing
up two fundamentally different ways of relating the theory to the
stuff itself:

  Some may at first be put off by the overt theorizing apparent in
  German harmony, wi****ng perhaps that a choice be made once and for
  all between Riemann's Functionstheorie and the older Stufentheorie,
  or possibly believing that so-called linear theories [IH> read
  "Schenkerism"] have settled all earlier disputes. 
   Yet this ongoing conflict between antithetical theories, with its
  attendant uncertainties and complexities, has special merits. In
  particular, whereas an English-speaking student may falsely believe
  that he or she is learning harmony "as it really is," the German
  student encounters what are obviously theoretical constructs and
  must deal with them accordingly. 

http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/Papers/PubPapers/
   Robert Gjerdingen, A Guide To The Terminology Of German Harmony

BTW: The website also has material on "Partimenti" (i.e. bass parts)
which represented yet-another-way-to-teach-music way-back-when.

Ian