Re: Felix Salzer and medieval polyphony (a random aside)

Hello, there, Joseph Pehrson and everyone.

In recent digests, I've seen references to Felix Salzer's analysis of
12th-13th century polyphony in the first issue of a publication
entitled _The Music Forum_ around 1967. Please let me emphasize that I
comment on this article from my own medievalist point of view, and
that someone looking at Salzer from a perspective of Schenkerian
analysis might have other kinds of insights to contribute.

From my own viewpoint, I would say that Salzer's article is indeed
open to some serious criticisms, but that many of these criticisms
would apply also to more recent publications written after decades of
further scholarship have revealed more about the practice and theory
of Gothic music.

First, please let me give credit to Salzer on one very important
point, despite his sometimes rather negative way of recognizing it: he
regards Gothic polyphony as a "modal-contrapuntal" style quite
independent of 18th-19th century "harmony" based on key progressions
such as I-IV-V-I. He further recognizes what I term the complete trine
(from Johannes de Grocheio's _trina harmoniae perfection_), in his
term a sonority with fifth and octave or fourth and octave above the
lowest part -- as the unit of stable sonority in this era.

Thus Salzer should not be numbered as among those theorists who regard
13th-century verticality as a "primitive" or imperfect version of
18th-century harmony. He specifically disclaims this view, and further
emphasizes that although the three voices of a composition around 1200
do not form key progressions, they do make up what he terms "tonal
organisms" with idiomatic patterns of "consonant and dissonant"
sonorities combining the separate voices.

When I read this article for the first time in 1968, it captured my
attention as a lover of medieval polyphony, challenging me as it were
to proceed further in exploring and appreciating the special patterns
of this music.

In comparison, one can find what I consider much less comprehending
approaches, Schenkerian and otherwise. The basic problem may be that
analysts and historians often tend to approach this music from an
explicit or implicit norm of 18th-century tonality, and to make
judgments on that basis.

For example, one recent history of European music tells us that
13th-century polyphony has a stable verticality based mainly on
"hollow" sonorities -- that is, complete trines, the epitome of rich
saturation in this era. It is added that "full triads" sometimes
occur -- that is, relatively blending but unstable sonorities with
outer fifth, major third, and minor third, the medieval _quinta fissa_
or "split fifth."

One might just as well write that Bach's stable harmony is defined by
"bare and simple triads," but that "rich and sonorous seventh chords
and added-sixth chords sometimes occur, inevitably leading however to
a bare triad or the like." Imposing the aesthetics of 20th-century
jazz, say, on 18th-century technique, seems to me no more or less
arbitrary than imposing 18th-century aesthetics on 13th-century
music.

When taken against this kind of background, much of Salzer's
presentation can seem positively liberating. His project of seeking
some form of "tonal coherence" in the most generic sense, based on
principles other than the triads and key progressions of the 18th
century, is itself most laudible.

Unfortunately, as Ervin Wilson might say, Salzer focuses on the
"non-18th-century" character of the progressions -- but not very much
on other possible patterns of vertical tension and relaxation between
stable and unstable sonorities, for example at directed cadences. This
omission is a real shortcoming of the analysis, although one might add
that such critical sources as the complete Latin edition of the
_Speculum musicae_ of Jacobus of Liege (c. 1325) were just becoming
available when Salzer wrote.

Similarly, one finds a statement that 18th-century techniques such as
"deceptive cadences" are unknown in this "modal-contrapuntal" style.
Certainly, one might reply, _18th-century_ deceptive cadences are
based on musical expectations which do not apply in this music. To
approach the problem of whether some 13th-century equivalent of a
"deceptive cadence" might occur -- a progression leading one to
anticipate a decisive resolution where an inconclusive event in fact
ensues -- we would want first to define a usual "cadence."

Some of the pieces of Perotin dating around or slightly before 1200 which
Salzer analyzes would indeed provide superb examples of such standard
cadences, but unfortunately he notes the absence of 18th-century
progressions without seeking out 13th-century progressions which might
similarly lend a sense of drama and directed tension to the music.

(For a theoretical reference to what might be called a "deceptive
cadence," we have go just a bit beyond the 13th century, to Marchettus of
Padua and his "feigned color" or deceptive cadential inflections described
in 1318. This concept seems to me quite analogous to later ones, here
with a basis in 14th-century rather than 18th-century vertical and melodic
expectations.)

However, one effect of my exposure to Salzer's analysis, as I now look
back on this encounter from a distance of 33 years, has been to whet
my appetite for the recognition of such alternative patterns and
paradigms.

Here I might add that Joseph Yasser's "Medieval Quartal Harmony" would
during my following university years have much the same impact.
Whatever my differences with Yasser's analysis -- and I have
some strong ones -- his bold presentation of medieval European
verticality as an integral system in its own right, and his drawing of
connections with other world polyphonies based on stable fifths and
fourths, would be germinal for me.

Of course, from the perspective of this Tuning List, the matter of
intonation can make some of the qualities of Gothic polyphony more
distinctive, and Vincent Corrigan's dissertation of 1980 on the Notre
Dame conductus repertory includes a discussion of Pythagorean tuning
which would help to prompt my eventual focus on this area.

In the field of musicology and analysis, one decade's omission is
another decade's self-evident verity -- possibly regarded by a yet
later decade as a questionable overgeneralization or theoretical
overreaching. In art, as in science, paradigms change, but Salzer's
article still evokes for me the excitement of the new even while
reminding me that over the intervening 30 years and more, much water
has flowed under the bridge.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net