Hello Ian,

The device you quote from the German Requiem is equally common in Brahms in the reverse direction (I don't know how else to describe it). In your case, an unraised degree is "replaced" by a raised one in another voice. In the following example from op. 100, the reverse happens.



Oof! Sorry about the resolution! In the 6th bar of the example, soprano B# decorates C#, while alto B-natural decorates the tonic.

It's a little less striking than the example you cite, i.e., easier to explain theoretically, but more striking in the sense that accidental and natural occur in the same register. All these criteria combine to make false relations into a fascinating topic.

One could find a whole list of examples of voice exchanges where one voice travels from 4-5-6 while the other moves from flat6-5-sharp4, including in Bach chorales.

In Schütz quite often one voice travels 1-7-6-5 while another goes 5-6-7-1. That can be very juicy in the middle of course. In Auf dem Gebirge and Freue dich des Weibes deiner Jugend (very loudly in the cornetts at the cadences!), for example.

Here is what to me is one of the false relations to end all false relations, from the D# minor Prelude from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier, in bar 20 (there's also one in the join of bars 18 and 19, but less drastic):




Note that the false relation is approached by an interval of a tritone!

(first time I played that at the piano, I was absolutely sure there must be a mistake in the edition or something, or I must have read it wrongly)

False relations abound in Alkan - a famous and unsubtle example being in the middle section of the Barcarolle op 65 no 6. He delights in harmonic naughties which can however be rationalised horizontally - there's a striking example in the last section of Le festin d'Esope Op 39 no 12 (the last of the studies in minor keys) particular around 21 bars before the end. Sorry, I haven't got a scanner or means to produce the example - would be most grateful if anybody else could oblige . . .

CD - very many thanks for that !

One of the YouTube comments is "renaissance music is the BEST!" -- is IRF reading this?

CRUNCH, no?

There's another moment with three adjacent semitones in the A major symphony KV 201... hang on, do I have a score?

Ah yes. First movement bar 192, both on the downbeat and on the second beat. A and B sustained in the oboes, A# as an appoggiatura to B in the violins.

I think even Wolfie enjoyed it: he brings it back twice, once in the major (Bb, A, Ab, bar 33) and then again in the minor in bar 94. And if the soloist plays the longer of the cadenzas Mozart wrote ('cadenza B' chez Bärenreiter) you get the clash again, although without the pedal note.

Bar 192 is the last bar of this bit: top line is oboes, treble clef, third line is first violins. (In between are horns in A so don't worry, there isn't a C going on as well...