Introduction To Part-Writing
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1music theory for musicians and normal people by toby w. rush
Introduction to Part-Writing
as we look ahead, we’re
confronted with an ugly truth:
there is a lot of music
in the history of the world
that is worth studying...
much more than we can
hope to cover in the span
of a few semesters.
since we can’t cover it all, we have to choose a specific musical language to study in depth.
let’s start by narrowing things down to the common practice period .
early 20th
renaissance
baroque
classical
romantic
contemporary
century
the common practice period is the music of the baroque,
it’s especially worth
classical and romantic eras in europe and america.
studying because
the name comes from the fact that most composers used
most of the pieces
a common musical language during this time.
commonly performed
in concert are
from this period...
but there is a ton of
common practice period music...
...and the language
more than we can hope to cover. is there a
forms the basis for
representative style we can sink our
the most popular
academic teeth into?
musical styles today.
four-voice chorale writing is a good style to study for several reasons:
the cantatas of j.s. bach
a large percentage of
chorales have a fast
provide us with a tremendous
harmonic rhythm, allowing
common practice period music
amount of consistently-written
can be easily reduced to
for a larger number of
four-voice chorales.
four-voice counterpoint.
chords per exercise.
more than two hundred years later, j.s. bach
one of the changes to the catholic church
proposed by martin luther
was appointed musical
director at the st. thomas
was to allow members of
the congregation to
church in leipzig, germany
participate in the singing
and, in the spirit of luther,
of the liturgy .
wrote five years’ worth
of liturgical music.
of course, luther was
branded a heretic for
each of these works,
his proposals, and began
called cantatas, were built
his own church in which
around a hymn melody
to implement his ideas.
harmonized in four parts
for congregational singing.
by analyzing bach’s cantatas, we can construct a set of “rules” for writing in
four-voice common practice period musical style, allowing us to study it in depth.
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