source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 17:37:00 -0800 Subject: Re: Three views on the fourth From: alves@osiris.ac.hmc.edu (Bill Alves) >If we flip to the last four bars of the first movement of >JS Bach's Italian Concerto,we are presented with a big fat I(6/4) chord >on the downbeat. Question: do you hear this simultaneity as >a consonance or a dissonance? I can only speak for myself; >I hear it as a flaming dissonance which Bach briefly savors >by abruptly slowing the rhythm after 12 bars of steady 16th notes. I'm afraid that I do not hear it as a dissonance. There are several historical reasons why the fourth was treated as a dissonance, but I think one is that the systems of common-practice counterpoint used "dissonance" interchangeably with "tension." Certainly this is not the case, and something Babbitt I think fails to represent accurately in his zeal to expose the arbitrary nature of common-practice counterpoint rules. Can you have tension in tonal music without dissonance? Clearly so. Dunstable and some other early 15th century composers wrote very beautiful music with few or no dissonances, yet the music seems to me to have tension and release about it. Because the fifth of the chord is on the bottom, the 6/4 chord is not as stable as the 5/3. Some theorists say this is because the 3rd harmonic of the lowest note forms a dissonance with the other two notes of the triad. There may be something to that, but of course Bach never thought of it that way. It is easier to think of it as 6/4 "resolving" to 5/3, the same way 5/4 would resolve to 5/3. In the second example, commonly a suspension, the fourth is not the dissonance -- the dissonance is the second between the upper two voices. However, because of the historical preoccupation with judging intervals always in reference to the lowest sounding voice, it was simpler to call the fourth a dissonance. There is always a certain amount of arbitrariness in any musical system. That's why it's art. However, music also has a basis in how we hear and the physics of sound. Certainly some people, such as Hindemith, have oversold this side of art in their misguided desire to make their style appear more in keeping with "natural laws" and less artificial. (Brian has, on occasion, and unfairly, I think, accused a wide range of JI composers of this very error.) Musical styles are created as a way of manipulating the physics and perception of sound towards artistic ends. Babbitt's arguments against the artificiality of the tonal system is ultimately pointless, I think, not to mention the pot calling the kettle black. Brian's vitriolic attack on Babbitt (besides beating a dead horse, as someone else has pointed out), goes too far in his search for hyperbole. To indict the man's musical education and knowledge in such strong terms requires much more evidence than his lack of explicit differentiation between sensory and musical perception of consonance and dissonance. Perhaps it is because Brian sees Babbitt as one of the high priests of academic music theory, which I don't think is really accurate anymore. Certainly there are those people still around who enjoy nothing more than pushing around numbers in sets ("Babbittry" was Greg Taylor's colorful term), but, generally speaking, the heyday of that sort of thing is long gone. I will not deny that the popularity of this kind of theory among academics was out of proportion with its historical importance, probably because of the appeal of such a complex yet readily quantifiable type of analysis. Nor will I try to claim that tuning issues are well-represented in the academic press. However, Brian's own welcome bibliographies should serve as evidence that there is no conscious Babbitt-led conspiracy against these issues. On a related note: though I don't share many of John Cage's philosophical viewpoints, I don't think it's fair to call him a charlatan. A charlatan is someone with pretensions, someone who misrepresents what they are doing. John Cage was upfront about exactly what he did and did not do. If you did not want to call him a composer or what he did music, that was fine with him. And to see Cage as a high priest of academia is even further removed from reality than in the case of Babbitt. I think that many academics did not accept Cage for a long time. The reasons are obvious: How do you evaluate chance music? How can you construct an objective theory about it? In that sense, Cage was about as un-academic as they come, and I for one am grateful for his breaking down some of the preconceptions and prejudices in academia and the arts in general. Bill ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^ ^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^ ^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^ ^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)621-8360 (fax) ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 03:01 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA28188; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 03:03:40 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA27964 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id SAA17796; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 18:03:37 -0800 Date: Mon, 2 Dec 1996 18:03:37 -0800 Message-Id: <961130185749_71670.2576_HHB20-9@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu