Part-Writing: The Vertical Rules
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1music theory for musicians and normal people by toby w. rush
Part-Writing: The Vertical Rules
it’s wrong to think these were
to best understand how
common practice period composers
“rules” for the composers...
wrote music, we are going to
they were just writing what
learn how to write music using
sounded good to them.
œ
their musical style.
nor should we treat these as rules
so the patterns we see in their music,
for writing music in general...
&
the things they consistently did
each style of writing has its
or didn’t do, are going to become
own set of patterns, and thus
“rules” for
us in our writing.
œ
its own “rulebook.” as a composer,
you get to write your own
rules for your own style!
we’re going to start with the
vertical rules... that is, the rules
that pertain to building a single
soprano
chord in four-voice harmony .
first, the distance between
soprano and alto and between
alto and tenor must be an
alto
octave or less.
the tenor and bass can be as
far apart as you want!
œ œ
?
second, the voices must be kept in
their proper order; for example,
the tenor shouldn’t be higher
than the alto. (Bach did this now
and then, but it was only when he
wanted to incorporate some special
melodic shapes.)
third, since we have four voices
tenor
and only three notes in a triad,
one of the notes should be
doubled . for triads in root
position, we typically double the
bass
root of the chord unless forced
(by other rules) to do otherwise.
œ
œ
lastly, each voice should
&
œ
stay in its range. these
are conservative ranges
œ
œ
for modern singers, but
œ
tenor
bass
remember that bach’s
?
œ
chorales were really
soprano
alto
written for amateurs:
œ
the common people who
attended church in leipzig!
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