Syllabus

Music 30A and L

Theory, Literature, and Musicianship I
Basic Harmony and Counterpoint
UC Santa Cruz, Fall Quarter 2010 

30A Section 01 (class# 10007), Section 02 (class# 16311)

30L Section 01 (class# 16312), Section 02 (class# 16318) 

Ben Carson | contact (click to email, or roll-over to see address. I’m also available sometimes via IM. If you’re patient.)

Office: Music Center 148

Meetings: Music Center 131 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 9:30 to 10:40 AM

Aural Skills Sections (L): with Dr. Maria Ezerova, Music Center 130. MWF 11:00a-12:10p (01/10007), 2:00-3:10p (02/16311).

Enrollment requirements: Excellence in Music 14, or proficiency demonstrated in placement exam & permission of instructor

Office hours: Mondays 11:00a - 12:20p, and Wednesdays 1:00-2:20 pm or by appointment. 

Phone:  9-5581 (I do not check voicemail frequently!)  

Teaching Assistants: John Bissett, Beth Ratay, Phoenix Hoefs 
MSI Tutor: Alley Faulk

Course Catalogue Description for Music 30ABC:   

Objectives: 

1. To develop advanced skills in reading and writing Western music notation.
2. To improve musicianship, through exercises in singing and keyboard playing.
3. Learn to analyze and compose traditional tonal harmonic progressions.
4. Learn to analyze and compose simple two-voice contrapuntal textures.
5. To comprehend basic musical materials in the 18th-century tonal style, including rhythm, meter, intervals, chords, and scales.

Required Texts: 

*Robert Ottman and Nancy Rogers. Music for Sight Singing. 7th Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006).

*Charles Burkhardt. Anthology for Musical Analysis. 6th Edition (New York: Cengage).

Kostka and Payne. Tonal Harmony. 6th Edition (New York: McGraw Hill).

J. S. Bach. 371 Harmonized Chorlales & 69 Chorale Melodies. (Milwaulke: Hal Leonard Publishing Group, 1941).

*top priorities this quarter.

Miscellaneous Aspects of the course: 
1.              Being there:   Regardless of any reason for absence, students are responsible for completing whatever work they have missed when they are gone.  Please let me know about absences that result from health conditions, family emergencies, or major transportation accidents, and so on.  However, in any case of absence, be sure to check with a classmate for information about what was discussed on that day, and get a clear sense of all new assignments. If you can’t get that information from a classmate, please contact me via email. More than five unexcused absences from class and lab combined, or three unexcused absences from lab, will result in a grade of NP. See “Course Credit and Grading” (below) for more details. 

2.             Performance anxiety:  In class, we’ll work on your skills and your knowledge in a direct and conversational way.  But I’m never interested in getting you to prove anything on the spot.   You will find that if you can’t get the answer right away, I’ll take lead the conversation differently so the class will work on it together.  I hope you’ll find I’m pretty good at diffusing any public sense of student deficiency. 
  
3.             Deadlines:  Please complete your homework in clear hand-written  notation, with a pencil, and get them in on time!  Late assignments will be accepted but they will not receive full credit and I cannot guarantee that I will give them thorough comments.  This can be a problem because I expect to see improvement from one assignment to the next, so one late assignment can affect your later grades if you don’t take the initiative to get my informal comments on your progress, and keep the “conversation” going. 
  
4.             Communication:  I respond to most email, IM, and text-messaging within 12 hours or so, to answer important questions about course material, the assignments and so on.  I love getting emails with questions about music and the actual content of the course.  I also want to hear from you if you’re having any trouble getting the concepts, getting the homework in, or getting to class.  But please limit the use of email for excuses about already-past absences of unfinished assignments – there’s no hurry to give me that information so it’s better to focus on your work and think about what you need to do for the next class. 
  
Course Credit and Grading: Music 30A

Theory Lecture Participation = 5%

Theory Homework = 20%

Theory Mid-term = 10%

Theory Final = 15%

Aural Skills Participation = 5 %

Aural Skills Quizzes: 8, 10, and 12 (students’ weakest, median, and strongest, respectively) = 30%

Aural Skills final = 15 %*

*A grade of 50% or less in the aural skills final exam will result in a credit of zero percent under this heading.  Your percentage for the aural skills portion of the grade (combining attendance, the quizzes, and the final) must also exceed 70%, in order for you to qualify for Music 30B.

  
More about grading: 
Grades are an evaluation of your accomplishments, not your intentions, your sincerity, or my sense of your potential. That might make some grades seem cold or harsh, but if you think about it, it’s actually the warmest possible arrangement: anything else requires me somehow to pretend that I can look into your soul and qualify myself to judge what I see. I don’t want to judge your character—if I tried to do that, it would take all the fun out of the everyday challenge of learning about music. I hope you’ll be comforted to know that a C- doesn’t mean I’m annoyed at you, and an A+ doesn’t mean I’m your newest fan. It’s not personal.

If you are ever uncertain about why I’ve given any particular evaluation, please come to me with questions about it. I’ll be happy that you want to understand the assignment, or the concepts, in greater detail. It helps this course a great deal if you try to build a conversation around my written feedback about your work. 

First Species Guidelines: the individual melodic line

For both the cantus firmus (the “given line”) and the counterpoint (the “opposing line”) that you write alongside it, the movement from one note to the next should be sensitive to certain guidelines. For now, 4 guidelines are enough:

Note-to-note motion 

1. No augmented, diminished, or chromatic intervals.

2. No intervals greater than a fifth, except octaves, and rising m6.

3. Do not connect (precede or follow) a large skip (5th, 6th, 8ve) with another skip in the same direction.

4. Avoid uncompensated skips.

The overall line

1. Keep a reasonable range, in good proportion to the length of the exercise.

(Roughly: 8-9 notes = 6th or less; 10-12 notes =  5th to a 9th; 13+ notes, up to a 10th ok, but not much more.)

(Part of keeping a reasonable range is making sure the lines themselves don’t stray too far beyond a 10th’s distance from one another. Distances greater than an octave should not persist for more than two intervals, before contracting to less than an octave.)

2. The cantus firmus should begin and end on the tonic of the mode.

3. Favor stepwise motion, with 1-2 skips, or 2-4 for longer lines.

4. Do not repeat any note more than once, and avoid “dwelling” in one region of the range.

5. A line should reach a clear climax. 

(For the sake of independence, the climax of one part should not be the same as the climax of another.)

First Species Guidelines: succession from interval to interval

“The Four Rules” of Renaissance Counterpoint

PC -> ic: use any motion

ic -> ic: use any motion

ic -> PC: use contrary motion only*

PC -> PC: use contrary or oblique motion

STANDARD RULES FOR INTERVAL SUCCESSION (Meaningful in all tonal music)

1. Do not approach perfect intervals by similar (or parallel) motion.

2. Favor imperfect consonances, but do not use more than three in a row without a perfect consonance intervening.

3. Avoid leaping in both voices simultaneously.

4. Use a good mixture of motion-types, pursuing parallel motion only with care, and not excessively.

Additionally* (Renaissance Counterpoint Only)

5.* Begin with an 8ve, a 5th, or a 1n, establishing the mode. End with an 8ve or 1n. Do not allow the voices to cross.

6.* Approach the final by step in both voices, with a leading tone in at least one voice.

7.* Use no dissonances (in 2-part writing, “dissonances” include perfect 4ths).

8.* Except at the beginning, avoid preceding or following an 8ve or 1n by skip (in either voice). You may leap (in one or more voices) out of an octave or unison that begins the exercise. This rule applies especially to octaves passing between imperfect consonances.

*These rules are too strict for conventional tonal music. Watch them fall away as we move into the free-wheelin’ late 17th century!

Second Species in the Renaissance Style

Second species exercises in the Renaissance style consists of two counterpoint notes per one cantus firmus note. The counterpoint note that occurs at the onset of a c.f. note is called “thesis”, and the intervening note is called “arsis.” This style will challenge us to think about how a skeleton of consonant notes (like a 1st-species exercise) might be “filled out” to form a more active melody against an accompanying line above or below it. The thesis is always harmonically consonant, and the arsis is considerably more free. Here are some guidelines for completing them.

1.* Theses are always consonant; they should (by themselves) resemble a 1st-species exercise. On the these ‘strong beats,’ use imperfect consonances mixed with occasional 8ves and 5ths.

2.* Restrict thesis unisons to the beginning and end of the exercise. Conventionally, 2nd-species exercises begin on a rest; so that the first note of the c.f. is on a weak beat. This avoids the necessity of moving from an 8ve or 1n stepwise to a dissonant 7th or 2nd/9th that would not resolve properly, or to another interval by an ungraceful leap.

3.* The only allowable dissonances (including 4ths) on the arsis are passing tones (marked “P” in an analysis). Passing tones—for now—are stepwise bridges between two harmonic notes a 3rd apart. (We’ll learn other types later.) They progress from a consonance to another consonance, and the dissonance will be right between them, “moving” from and to the surrounding notes by step.

4. Do not write parallel 5ths and 8ves

- from arsis to thesis

- from thesis to thesis, except in the situations Fux describes on p 44 & 45 of the reading. (But really, try to avoid them altogether!) We’ll use these rules in all exercises types, and all styles.

5. Other possibilities for the arsis. We’ll use these rules in all exercises types, and all styles.

- They can leap up and step down, leap down and step up. (These are highly desirable, as they are “compensated leaps.”) 

- They can also leap and then step in the same direction, which is good, because the step passes over a barline from arsis to thesis (weak to strong), “tying” the bars together at precisely the moment when we need a cognitive push.

- They can leap twice, as long as two leaps in the same direction actually form a chord.

- Avoid stepping and then leaping in the same direction. This ties the arsis beat back to the previous thesis, which really doesn’t need any help. It can leave the next thesis feeling arbitrary.

6. Note: even though Aloys never says this, Joseph seems to know it instinctively: we no longer need to worry about the rule where ic can’t lead to PC by oblique motion. We can now stick with TWO RULES for interval succession: 

= approach an i.c. by any motion you like, and 

= approach a PC by any motion EXCEPT similar motion. 

We’ll use these rules in all exercises types, and all styles.

*The first three rules above are too strict for conventional, common-practice tonal music. Respectable composers as early as the 1590s used all kinds of non-chord tones, on both strong and weak beats. They weren’t that radical—they were just following instincts for melody that troubadors had demonstrated for 100s of years in less “formal”, and usually less polyphonic, music. We’ll learn how they did it “formally” in the next unit! To learn more about the history of this transformation, read about the “Artusi Controversy.”

2:1 Writing in the 18th-century Style

 (CLARIFIED Nov. 1, 9:30 am)

Before composing baroque counterpoints in 2:1 relationships to accompanying lines, two concepts must be understood. Both are discussed in detail in Kent Kennan’s reading from the prior week.

(1) Non-chord tones (NCTs)—any notes that deviate from the essential, and usually consonant, intervals formed between the bass and the treble in a composition. We call them non-chord tones or non-harmonic tones because they are not part of the chord or implied harmony in which essential intervals participate. See Kent Kennan’s p 40-43 for a full description of the possibilities. (Most NCTs are dissonant, but resolutions from a 6th to 5th above the bass can qualify as NCT->CT resolutions.)

(2) Essential Intervals—the harmonic intervals that define the relationship between a bass line and an additional line above it. These intervals are usually consonant, and serve the composition much like the “consonances” on the thesis of Renaissance 2:1 counterpoint. However, the term harmonic is more important here, first because some times a seventh or a tritone, forming part of a V7 chord for example, will be considered the essential interval between the two lines.

Basic principles of 2:1 Counterpoint in the 18th-c style 

18th-century 2-part writing is primarily a relationship between essential intervals (the basic relationship between bass and treble, usually consonant), and NCTs (non-chord tones or non-harmonic tones, usually dissonant).

1. Interval succession: 2:1 writing / 2 parts. 3 possibilities.

The first possibilities are familiar to us from the Renaissance style. As in Renaissance 2:1 writing, the intervening note (the “arsis”) may either be dissonant or consonant, but we have much more freedom with how dissonances are treated.

i. Thesis EI (essential interval) -> Arsis NCT (non-chord tone). The dissonance, or other NCT—which in Renaissance 2:1 teaching could only be a passing tone—can now be any type of NCT.

ii. Thesis EI and arsis EI (usually both consonant against the bass; often a Consonant Skip or “CS”). Note: On the arsis, a perfect 4th may be an EI, if it completes a triad along with the two thesis notes.

The third possibility is new; it reflects the possibility that an essential interval might be delayed to the arsis when the thesis is dissonant.

iii. Thesis NCT -> Arsis EI. This possibility creates “accented NCTs,” especially accented passing tones, neighbor tones, and appogiaturas.

2. Directional motion to and from the arsis. 3 possibilities [similarto Renaissance Counterpoint]

i. leap up and step down, leap down and step up. (GREAT—we love “compensated leaps.”)

ii. leap and then step in the same direction. (Good, especially when the step passes from arsis to thesis.)

iii. leap twice, as long as two leaps in the same direction actually form a chord.

iv. Avoid “unfinished bridges”: stepping and then leaping in the same direction. (See next rule.)

3. STEP-SKIP RULES: 

     - Avoid step-skipping (stepping, and then skipping, in succession) in the same direction, such that the skip lands on a thesis.

     - When step-skipping in the same direction to land on arsis, compensate the skip, with a step in the opposite direction.

4. Non-harmonic tones must always be resolved stepwise, excepting escape tones.

5. Appogiaturas and escape tones involve three notes. 

- The outer two notes are both chord tones, and are not the same tone.

- The escape tone (E) is a step away from the first note; an appogiatura (App) is a step away from the second note. 

- Usually (but not always) the step and the leap on either side of an App or EI are in opposite directions.

(Because theses in baroque 2:1 writing are not always consonant, the theses are not sensible on their own, without the intervening arsis. It doesn’t always make sense to start from 1:1 writing, and add notes between the theses; starting from scratch allows you to use accented NCTs (i.e. thesis NCTs) freely.)

6. Avoid repeating the lower note in a counterpoint, either from arsis->thesis, or from thesis->thesis. (i.e., from one thesis to the next, the bass should be in some kind of motion.)

7. Do not write parallel 5ths and 8ves

i. - from arsis to thesis

ii. - from thesis to thesis; exceptions are possible when one interval (especially a 5th) is a non-essential interval. (See Kennan p 48.)

8.  Other guidelines for perfect consonances: 

i. - do not leap to a PC in both voices

ii. - avoid 2 PCs in succession

iii. - do not approach PCs by similar motion