Re: Can someone explain?

On Oct 5, 2:02 pm, Jerry Kohl <jeromek...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 4, 12:55 pm, Margo Schulter <mschul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



What I would add is that while the 12-mode system and also
chromatic experimentation around 1550-1600 are vital steps
which in actual history happen to lead to the tonality of
1680, they might lead in other directions also, as may
happen in the "neo-Manneristic" music of the 21st century
based on fluid and often ambiguous modality and "closest
approach" progressions such as major third to fifth.
[snip]
Could their [recte: there]
be some affinity here with Debussy and Impressionism: a
sheer love of euphonious sonority?

You have made an interesting juxtaposition here, Margo, of 21st
century "neo-Mannerism" and Debussy as a neo-somethingist a hundred
years earlier--interesting (to me, at least) because over fifty years
ago, Henry Leland Clarke made a similar observation about Debussy
reviving a medieval sensibility. This was in Clarke's "Toward a
Musical Periodization of Music", Journal of the American Musicological
Society 9, no. 1 (Spring, 1956), pp. 25-30. On page 26 of that
article, Clarke presents a table with his proposed new terminology for
periods of music history, which interpolated between monophony and
polyphony the classifications "diaphony" and "metaphony". By the
former, Clarke refers to parallel organum and slightly later note-
against-note styles, from the Musica Enchiriadis down to the early
12th century; by the latter, the chronologically overlapping
melismatic styles from St. Martial organum through Petrus de Cruce and
some of Machaut's music Iisorhythmic motets). Similarly, between the
polyphonic (14th to 16th centuries) and homophonic (late-18th/
early-19th century) periods, he interpolates an "amphonic" era,
running from Monteverdi's seconda prattica to Bach and Handel.

Now, when he gets to the 20th century, he has got in 1956 only the
first half of it to consider, but his position is that all the various
styles are essentially throwbacks to earlier style periods, and calls
this most recent period the "neophonic" period. Debussy in particular
he classes as "neo-diaphonic", which resonates with your example of
note-against-note style. The only later composers actually represented
in Clarke's table are Stravinsky and Schoenberg, who are designated
"neo-amphonic" and "neo-polyphonic", respectively.

Needless to say, Clarke does not mean to say that Debussy was
literally reviving parallel organum or conductus, any more than he is
claiming that Schoenberg was reverting to the style of Palestrina
(Stravinsky's neo-baroque works are perhaps a little closer to being a
conscious stylistic borrowing). Rather, he speaks of generalized
*principles* of musical construction, and points out that the rise of
historical musicology ("as a rigorous discipline") coincides with the
most recent, "neophonic" period, so that an increased awareness of
past historical styles may be seen both to precipitate the extreme
stylistic diversity of the 20th century, and to explicate the natures
of those various styles.

It would be interesting to know how Prof. Clarke (who died in 1992)
might have continued this analysis of "neophony" into the new century,
where even literal stylistic imitation has taken on a degree of
respectability in some circles.

--
Jerry Kohl
"Mea navicula pendens anguillarum plena est."

Now y'all are discovering the principles that I was relating to Margo
a few posts ago. There is nothing really new, only different
adaptations based on the tools of the day of older discoveries that
have stood the test of time. The principles of counterpoint used in
the early centuries of musical development were very sound and based
on proven and basic principles. Debussy, Stravinski and Schoenberg
(and scores of others!) were well aware of this wisdom of the ages and
each studied and understood them and applied them to the tools and
temperament of their era. And like I suggested to Margo about using
the principles of the Steps to Parnassus but updating the consonance
and dissonance to what she would consider the appropriate tools to
create counterpoint with the Middle Eastern scales, so did these and
other composers modify the early principles to suit their needs for
their concepts of music.

A more popular and simpler use of this "taken from the masters"concept
as used in Jazz would be someone like T. Monk. Many of his
compositions seem to be taking the 20th century principles that were
adapted by some of the 20th Century composers and did little projects
based on their ideas. "Well You Needn't" comes to mind, but there are
others. Here we have a current adaptation of the principles of Planing
that is (among other things) a 20th C. tool of harmonic progression as
the basis of a jazz tune. Notice the absence of ii-V-Is. (not a direct
example of Clarke's studies, but close enough for Jazz! ;-)

If you study literature, you will also see that there are certain
plots, styles and forms that have been worked and reworked from the
times of the Greeks (maybe before) and are still being adapted to fit
today's situations.

LJS

.

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