[HN Gopher] Tritone Substitutions
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Tritone Substitutions
Author : chmaynard
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-07-27 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com)
| NickC25 wrote:
| neat!
|
| Always love to see music theory content here. Nice find!
| beefman wrote:
| The earliest tritone substitution I know of appears in Scarlatti
| K420
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3_NfuvK8Y
|
| There are two tritones in 7-limit just intonation (7/5 and 10/7)
| and therefore two possible tritone substitutions. Here they're
| played successively
|
| http://lumma.org/music/theory/demo/progs/TritoneProgressions...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I didn't hear that spot as a tritone substitution, personally,
| but a sort of non-harmonic counterpoint move ("passing tones"
| or "setup tones" to 19th century theorists).
|
| More broadly, a lot of people like to point out wild 20th
| century chords in baroque music, but they really didn't think
| in terms of chords, and as such these pseudo-chords don't have
| the same function that modern versions of chords do. In
| particular, Scarlatti was a prolific user of the partimento
| method of composition, which is a slightly of abstracted
| version of counterpoint, and his sonatas are pretty good
| examples of pieces written with this in mind. The method
| revolves around intervals and movement between voices rather
| than chords. It's normal for someone thinking in counterpoint
| to produce some very "modern" "chords" because that's a common
| consequence of following nothing but voice leading to produce a
| piece of music.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimento
|
| See also Rick Beato mis-analyzing Bach's counterpoint as
| containing a very "modern" maj7#5 chord:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1f_tzBx6ko&t=1s
| briffid wrote:
| But JS Bach apparently did love those modern sounds, see BWV
| 542/I But indeed it doesn't make much sense to apply jazz
| theory on classical or early music.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've never quite understood that POV, although my piano
| teacher had it. Clearly she had another way of
| understanding it which I'm sure is _more_ useful. I lack
| that training.
|
| Pick an example everyone knows: Bach's Prelude in C. I
| wrote in chord symbols over every bar of that, except for
| that one very weird bar near the end. It helped me a lot in
| memorizing it.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| See also BWV 903 and BWV 1079.
| beefman wrote:
| Scarlatti's sonatas contain many chords, apart from pure
| polyphony. In fact they're particularly notable for their
| early inroads toward functional harmony. The tritone
| substitution in K420 is a clear example of this. Bach much
| less so, and certainly not in the case highlighted by Beato
| there.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Whether it contains what a modern ear hears as chords or
| not, he wrote the piece using polyphonic methods. Bach's
| music also contains plenty of chords, but that doesn't
| change how it was written.
|
| When theorists talk about Scarlatti laying the foundation
| of harmony, partimento is probably the foundation they are
| referring to. Functional harmony of the 19th century is
| just a more powerful abstraction.
| ramenbytes wrote:
| Can you recommend any good books or resources for
| learning polyphonic compositional methods and/or about
| the other known methods?
| zarzavat wrote:
| > A tritone is very dissonant
|
| I'm sure he didn't mean it literally, but to be pedantic a
| tritone is only moderately dissonant. A minor second is very
| dissonant.
| coldtea wrote:
| In some musical cultures it's also totally acceptable and
| featured all the time, without being considered dissonant.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _But never mind. What if we take my picture and rotate it 180
| degrees? Then we get a new chord! This trick is called a tritone
| substitution._
|
| I know tritone subtitution from music theory, and trying to grok
| this explanation. What does the "roation by 180 degrees"
| represent in this case?
| ksenzee wrote:
| He means turn the circle of fifths 180 degrees. In other words,
| move the chord up a tritone (six half-steps).
| decasia wrote:
| I asked some classical music people once if there was a history
| of harmony. Someone retorted that the modern concept of harmony
| was an inadequate way of understanding counterpoint, and that the
| primary concept should be voice leading, not vertical harmony. I
| suppose it makes sense -- that our categories of musical analysis
| have histories, and it can be misleading to apply them out of
| context (as the rest of this thread is commenting).
|
| But I still wish someone would write a history about "what kinds
| of harmonies do people think sound good/melodious/interesting,
| and which do they consider bad/ugly/weird/useless at a given
| moment." Or if that history already exists, I wish I knew how to
| find it.
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