Re: TD 737: History of seventh combinations (Pierre Lamothe)

Hello, there, and in response to a question about seventh sonorities,
I would like to offer two main points.

First, minor seventh combinations such as E3-G3-B3-D4 (here C4 is
middle C, with higher notes showing higher octaves) occur in the music
of Perotin around 1200, and in some other 3-limit styles of the Gothic
era (c. 1200-1400). These sonorities, of course, resolve according to
3-limit rather than later 5-limit principles, and may have various
melodic as well as vertical motivations. Jacobus de Montibus (also
known as Jacobus of Liege), around 1325, specifically describes and
approves the use of a three-voice sonority with an outer minor seventh,
fifth, and minor third (e.g. E3-G3-D3 or E3-B3-D3).

Secondly, if the main focus of the question is on the free use of
seventh sonorities in a 5-limit context, then I would say that
sonorities with a minor seventh, fifth, and minor third such as
D3-A3-C4 are common for example in the music of Claudio Monteverdi
(1567-1643), and come into prominence roughly in the same era around
1600 as other kinds of boldly treated seventh sonorities, for example
those including a tritone.

In my view, it is very important to make a distinction between the
practice of 5-limit verticality in the 16th and early 17th centuries
based on a variety of modes and progressions (some borrowed from the
Gothic era and modified to meet new ideals of sonority), and the
major-minor key system established by around the time of Corelli
(c. 1680).

While these distinctions are often stated in terms of an earlier
"contrapuntal" style vs. a later treatment of "chords as autonomous
entities," I would propose a somewhat different distinction between
_combinative verticality_ and _chordal_ verticality.

In a combinative style, Gothic 3-limit or Renaissance/Manneristic
5-limit, intervals generally serve as the "elementary particles" of
sonority and motion. Thus various multi-voice sonorities are formed as
combinations of intervals, and multi-voice cadences often superimpose
or "stack" elementary two-voice progressions to build unified
progressions.

In a chordal and especially a key-based style, there is a tendency to
derive many sonorities by stacking similar intervals (e.g. thirds in
18th-19th century harmonic theory), and to view intervals as
"fragments" of such chords.

"Autonomous" vertical events are, in my view, by no means foreign to
combinative 3-limit and 5-limit styles. In 1318, for example,
Marchettus of Padua explains the power of progressions by stepwise
contrary motion from an unstable to a stable interval (e.g. m3-1,
M3-5, M6-8) by saying that both voices participate in the tension of
the unstable interval, and both move to resolve it.

A progression such as the following, occuring around 1200 in Perotin,
illustrates the use of a bold minor seventh in a 3-limit context to
achieve a very powerful and beautiful cadential moment:

D4 C4
B3 C4
G3 F3
E3 F3

(m7-5 + m3-1 + M3-5 + m3-1)

Here there are no fewer than four directed two-voice resolutions of
unstable intervals by contrary motion, including the contraction of
the outer minor seventh to a richly stable fifth, mutually reinforcing
each other in order to achieve a memorable overall effect.

As mentioned, the theorist Jacobus (c. 1325) describes the use of such
vertical sonorities combining minor sevenths, fifths, and minor
thirds, and also notes the standard resolution of the minor seventh to
a fifth. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377) continues to use such
progressions, but by the era of Dufay (c. 1397-1474) a more caution
treatment of the seventh has become the rule, a state of affairs which
continues until near the end of the 16th century.

While the prominent 13th-14th century use of seventh sonorities fits
quite logically into a complex 3-limit system of verticality, it does
not easily fit into the traditional kind of 19th-20th century music
history which focuses more or less on the origins of 18th-century
harmony. Thus directed vertical progressions of the Gothic era, just
as forceful and compelling to my ears as any 18th-19th century
progressions, often have tended to be explained in "contrapuntal" or
"horizontal" terms.

Of course, such medieval 3-limit progressions do result from a meeting
of horizontal as well as vertical factors, and the interaction between
the dimensions provides much of the art and delight of the music.
Also, because Gothic music and also early 5-limit music are not bound
by requirements of major/minor key tonality, many horizontal _and_
vertical progressions are common which would be excluded, or at
unusual, in key-based music of the 18th-19th centuries. Each system
has its own logic and beauty.

Returning to the question of bold seventh combinations in early
5-limit music, which seem to come into fashion around 1600
(e.g. Monteverdi and Gesualdo), Carl Dahlhaus has noted the penchant
in Monteverdi for sonorities such as the following D3-A3-C4. Here the
numbers at the top of the example show beats in a duple meter such as
2/2:

1 & 2 & | 1 ...
C4 B3 C4
A3 G#3 A3
D3 E3 A2

The bold minor seventh, the outer interval of the sonority, resolves
by stepwise contrary motion to the fifth, as in our Gothic 3-limit
example -- but here in a very different 5-limit setting, where
multi-voice sonorities have a different logic. This m7-5 resolution
between the outer voices leads to the new tension of a 4-3 suspension
involving the middle voice.

The resolution of this suspension in turn leads to an M3-8 progression
between the two lower voices, with the middle voice ascending by a
semitone while the bass descends by a fifth. This two-voice formula is
described by Zarlino in 1558, and presented as the characteristic
close by Giovanni Coperario (c. 1608).

To conclude, the use of bold minor seventh combinations, with sevenths
resolving to fifths by stepwise contrary motion, is characteristic
both of 3-limit Gothic music from Perotin to Machaut and of 5-limit
Manneristic music around the time of Monteverdi. During the
intervening 15th and 16th centuries, sevenths are normally treated
more cautiously.

Note also that in either Gothic practice around 1200 or Manneristic
practice around 1600, such bold seventh sonorities are, of course,
unstable: they require resolution, sooner or later, to a stable
sonority in a manner fitting the applicable 3-limit or 5-limit style.
While we can say that the minor seventh is "freer" around 1200 or 1600
than around 1500, its true "emancipation" from the need to resolve
occurs somewhere around the turn of the 20th century.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net