If we had ever before considered Bach's squiggles it was only to dismiss them as a piece of eighteenth-century irrelevance, so we stand now agape in simple wonderment at all these revelations.
But to return to this:
If a major-third sequence is played using only ‘pure’ intervals (i.e. C-E, E-G#, G#-B#) the last note (B#) lies horribly flat from the expected C.
One would seldom wish to do that in diatonic music would one? We suppose the Member to have had in mind something like this:
or even of this kind:
but neither of those sequences is much like
real music. When one moves for example from E to G# that would would it not normally be thought of in a context of
tonal harmony i.e. A to E then A to G# and not really E to G# at all. The A's may be there still
in the musician's mind even if they are not sounded that is what we are saying; and it would be his the musician's
duty to harmonise the other notes with the tonic (i.e. with the context) rather than with each other, thus:
or thus:
The following four-part sequence even would be altogether more natural and harmonious then than any of the above would not it?
Let us now for a moment address the point about the a capella singers' "pitch drops":
It seems that when the music modulates, the right singers have to adjust the crucial intervals so that Pythagorean tuning is maintained but the pitch does not drop. In Palestrina's music, the modulations are relatively straigh[t]forward and pitch drops don't generally occur. But in some other music of that period, special care must be taken at critical moments. Late Gesualdo is probably the ultimate test.
We suppose that
were the work
not designed to return to its original key one would really
expect its pitches to move around as a result of the journey it contains or embodies - rather than as a
fault this should perhaps be regarded as a necessary phenomenon arising from the nature of sound and the progression of the music. A
requirement in other words. Of course though were it something of Mozart we should expect balance, but other composers have other, non-Mozartian ideas.
Finally we draw the attention of Members to the possibility of getting away from it all on a canoeing trip. This was the dream of the little Austrian here depicted, renowned may we say for his extreme neatness:
In the seminal year
1908 he produced this - "moving tenderly" as he put it:
We wonder how much if at all it is modelled upon the music of Heinrich Isaac (1450 - 1517)?
Certainly the composer was at this time (
1908, as we say) an enthusiastic follower and setter of
Stefan George the renowned
Homosexualist and
Symbolist poet.
The music contains rather a lot of
snags does it not? Can any Member recommend a performance?
Here to end up with is George
dressed up as Dante (second from the left), with a selection of his little friends and disciples.
