# Functional harmony in Medieval and Renaissance music



## Mandryka

consuono said:


> That could be because so much modern music draws on medieval and Renaissance styles.





Mandryka said:


> What? .





consuono said:


> Modal music, for one thing.


Is Consuono right here about the absence of functional harmony in Renaissance music?


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## Taggart

Yes.

Standard tunes can be harmonised very easily by a three chord trick - basically I, IV and V. Modal tunes don't work that way.

There are long (and involved) screeds on several sites about how to write chordal accompaniments to modal tunes. There's also a large amount of modal jazz yet. 

Basically, a mode has three features (in addition to the scale pattern) - the dominant, the final and the ambitus (the range). If the final is at the bottom of the ambitus, the mode is defined as authentic. The dominant will then be (usually) the fifth note (not in the Phrygian mode) so it's almost as we expect but the step pattern is different which fouls up the harmonies. If the final is in the middle of the ambitus, usually the fourth,, the mode is plagal. The dominant will then be either the sixth or seventh of the ambitus.

The dominant is used as a reciting tone in plainchant.

The notes don't have the same functions as in standard common practice harmony so functional harmony doesn't work.


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## Bwv 1080

Functional harmony did not exist before the term was coined in the 1890s by Hugo Reimann and other German theorists

Can you find V-I cadences in Renaissance music? sure, did any Renaissance composer think about things in terms of harmonic function? Not likely


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## SanAntone

Bwv 1080 said:


> Functional harmony did not exist before the term was coined in the 1890s by Hugo Reimann and other German theorists
> 
> Can you find V-I cadences in Renaissance music? sure, did any Renaissance composer think about things in terms of harmonic function? Not likely


I agree.

Overall these periods were linearly concerned rather than vertically, and some dissonance was accepted if the individual lines made sense. Functional harmony is a concept tied to tonality and the movement from the I to the V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

I'm a lot more skeptical than others here of the idea that there's some great divide between the modal, linear framework of the medieval and Renaissance and functional harmony. In truth, the transition was a lot more gradual (notice the gradual strengthening of cadential figures throughout the 14th-16th century). The "movement from I to V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance" is certainly prominent in a lot of Renaissance music, though perhaps on a large scale the music tends to be less formally preoccupied with the concept.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

It's sort of like you can say the blues doesn't follow notions of functional harmony. Ok, sure, but it's not that far off...


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## Bwv 1080

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I'm a lot more skeptical than others here of the idea that there's some great divide between the modal, linear framework of the medieval and Renaissance and functional harmony. In truth, the transition was a lot more gradual (notice the gradual strengthening of cadential figures throughout the 14th-16th century). The "movement from I to V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance" is certainly prominent in a lot of Renaissance music, though perhaps on a large scale the music tends to be less formally preoccupied with the concept.


Sure, but at some point slapping a bunch of Roman numerals on a Josquin mass approaches the ridiculousness pitch-set analysis of Brahms - sure most all Brahms is based on <013568A>, but is that useful information?


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## SanAntone

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I'm a lot more skeptical than others here of the idea that there's some great divide between the modal, linear framework of the medieval and Renaissance and functional harmony. In truth, the transition was a lot more gradual (notice the gradual strengthening of cadential figures throughout the 14th-16th century). The "movement from I to V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance" is certainly prominent in a lot of Renaissance music, though perhaps on a large scale the music tends to be less formally preoccupied with the concept.


You misunderstood my reference ("movement from I to V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance") which was to the sonata-allegro form, something completely foreign to the Medieval and Renaissance periods.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

SanAntone said:


> You misunderstood my reference ("movement from I to V and back again, as well as the resolution of dissonance") which was to the sonata-allegro form, something completely foreign to the Medieval and Renaissance periods.


I understood your reference perfectly well, hence why I said medieval / Ren. composers tended to be less preoccupied with tonic-dominant relationships on a _formal_ level. But - unless you're Schencker - functional harmony exists primarily on a phrasal level, and I would argue you can find more than traces of it in medieval and Renaissance music.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Bwv 1080 said:


> Sure, but at some point slapping a bunch of Roman numerals on a Josquin mass approaches the ridiculousness pitch-set analysis of Brahms - sure most all Brahms is based on <013568A>, but is that useful information?


Oh, come on, you know that's not a fair comparison. Josquin is basically tonal.


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## EdwardBast

16thc composers, at least, reached a consensus, confirmed in theoretical treatises, that the triad in root position and first inversion was the ideal unit of harmony. And with the use of musica ficta, cadencial patterns in most modes tended to resemble modern V-I cadences, but this is readily explained by the principles of voice-leading and the constraints of the linear resolution to perfect consonances. To hear how far Renaissance composers were from functional harmony one need only listen to experiments like Lassus' Prophetiae Sibyllarum, Gesualdo's Sixth Book, or some of the more unusual madrigals of Rore and Marrenzio. No one with the remotest inkling of functional harmony in a modern sense would have treated chromaticism in such free-wheeling and fascinating ways.



BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Oh, come on, you know that's not a fair comparison. Josquin is basically tonal.


Josquin is quintessentially modal.


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## cheregi

EdwardBast said:


> Josquin is quintessentially modal.


I'd be really curious to compare which Josquin recordings we are all basing our judgments on. I think the vast majority of modern ensembles 'tonalize' the music to a great degree, singing it as a series of chord progressions, and of course everybody makes different decisions regarding musica ficta - it seems to me that if we are bringing our own preconceptions to a recording made by people who are themselves bringing their own preconceptions to a score which is itself informed by a scholar's preconceptions regarding the nature of Josquin's music, and if almost all of that 'layering' is happening in our current tonal-immersed era, then it makes sense that many people would go 'well of course Josquin is practically tonal, just listen!'


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## Richannes Wrahms

cheregi said:


> (...) our current tonal-immersed era (...)


Today's era has a bit of everything.


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## cheregi

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Today's era has a bit of everything.


This is a fair point, I think I got a little carried away. Still, though, and I would argue especially if you take into account popular musics, the many 20th and 21st century experiments outside tonality still basically register to most people as experiments, departing from a baseline norm...


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## SanAntone

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I understood your reference perfectly well, hence why I said medieval / Ren. composers tended to be less preoccupied with tonic-dominant relationships on a _formal_ level. But - unless you're Schencker - functional harmony exists primarily on a phrasal level, and I would argue you can find more than traces of it in medieval and Renaissance music.


You are looking at this anachronistically, i.e. looking backwards and applying our tonal system to early music; whereas I am describing how Josquin and other composers during the Medieival and Renaissance periods most likely thought about what they were doing, i.e. weaving the various lines of the polyphony and being aware of the vertical coincidences and the intervals created but mainly concerned with dissonances and how they were resolved.

This was still modal music, not diatonic tonality which really did not take hold until the Baroque period.


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## EdwardBast

SanAntone said:


> You are looking at this anachronistically, i.e. looking backwards and applying our tonal system to early music; whereas I am describing how Josquin and other composers during the Medieival and Renaissance periods most likely thought about what they were doing, i.e. weaving the various lines of the polyphony and being aware of the vertical coincidences and the intervals created but mainly concerned with dissonances and how they were resolved.
> 
> *This was still modal music, not diatonic tonality which really did not take hold until the Baroque period.*


Yes. And even then it took hold slowly and fitfully. Those early Florentine operas have some strange twists, (what we would call) altered mediant relationships like G minor following E major triads (Peri). Even later, in England, one has Purcell seemingly enjoying experimental transitional language.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

SanAntone said:


> You are looking at this anachronistically, i.e. looking backwards and applying our tonal system to early music; whereas I am describing how Josquin and other composers during the Medieival and Renaissance periods most likely thought about what they were doing, i.e. weaving the various lines of the polyphony and being aware of the vertical coincidences and the intervals created but mainly concerned with dissonances and how they were resolved.
> 
> This was still modal music, not diatonic tonality which really did not take hold until the Baroque period.


This is all conjecture. In the end, we can never know how and to what extent Renaissance composers were concerned with vertical harmony. The perspective I get from studying canonical theory and from listening to music by Josquin, Palestrina, Purcell, and many others is that their harmonic language is much closer to that of the CPE than is commonly taught. But I acknowledge that it is also likely that my ears are biased to hear a stronger sense of tonality in Renaissance works than the composers had intended.

Regards.


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## SanAntone

I'll just mention that Josquin was born at least 75 years prior to Palestrina, and over 200 years prior to Purcell - Josqin's music is very different from either Palestrina or Purcell.

There are contemporary treatises that describe how a composer like Josquin approached composing. The idea of diatonic triads was non-existent. As I said earlier, composers in the early and middle Renaissance were weaving several individual voices into polyphony. Their only vertical concern were intervals, not triads. They would make sure no two voices created dissonances that went unresolved.

If we from a distance of several hundred years want to force feed a diatonic tonality onto their works, it would be a historical distortion.

One thing I do not like that some early music ensembles do is how they treat accidentals, "musica ficta." During the Medieval and Renaissance periods manuscripts did not indicate most accidentals but the singers of the time knew how to deal with cadences, raising some notes, with discretion. Some modern ensembles who wish to make the music conform more to diatonic harmony will abuse this discretion unidiomatically.

So depending up on which recordings you listen to, the music can sound more "tonal" and less modal.


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## Rapide

Mandryka said:


> Is Consuono right here about the absence of functional harmony in Renaissance music?


Yes, it was an early primitive means of composing in the Renaissance also in part due to the limitations of musical instruments they had.


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## EdwardBast

SanAntone said:


> There are contemporary treatises that describe how a composer like Josquin approached composing. The idea of diatonic triads was non-existent. As I said earlier, composers in the early and middle Renaissance were weaving several individual voices into polyphony. Their only vertical concern were intervals, not triads. They would make sure no two voices created dissonances that went unresolved.


Gioseffo Zarlino's _Istitutione Harmoniche_ (1558), Volume 3, _The Art of Counterpoint_, codifies middle Renaissance practice with respect to vertical configurations. In Chapter 59, titled "Three-Voice Compositions and What Must Be Observed in Writing Them," he states: "A composition may be called perfect when, in every change of chord … there are heard all those consonances whose components give a variety of sound. … These consonances that offer diversity to the ear are the fifth and third or their compounds. … We must strive with all our might … to have these two consonances or their compounds sound in our compositions as much as possible. True, musicians often write the sixth in place of the fifth, and this is fine [thus including first inversion triads as perfect harmonies].

Zarlino goes on to state that it is often necessary to exclude one of the consonances in three part writing because of voice-leading considerations. But "to deprive compositions in four-parts of one of these consonances is shameful." ( - I love his moralizing tone, which makes the book more amusing than any counterpoint text has a right to be.) So, although he doesn't have a term for these configurations beyond "perfect harmony," Zarlino is clearly stating that what we call triads in root position and first inversion are the foundation of good harmonic practice and that they should always be used when it is possible to do so.

As an historical note, Zarlino was a student of Willaert, so there is a generation of remove between him and Josquin.

Oddly enough, Zarlino's book, including his exercises and cantus firmi, was the text for the first class I took in Renaissance counterpoint - and that's why I have it ready to hand. The professor really liked primary sources.

Please note that I'm not disagreeing with your position, in fact I agree with it: This is not tonality in any modern sense. Zarlino is talking about modal counterpoint.


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## SanAntone

EdwardBast said:


> Gioseffo Zarlino's _Istitutione Harmoniche_ (1558), Volume 3, _The Art of Counterpoint_, codifies middle Renaissance practice with respect to vertical configurations. In Chapter 59, titled "Three-Voice Compositions and What Must Be Observed in Writing Them," he states: "A composition may be called perfect when, in every change of chord … there are heard all those consonances whose components give a variety of sound. … These consonances that offer diversity to the ear are the fifth and third or their compounds. … We must strive with all our might … to have these two consonances or their compounds sound in our compositions as much as possible. True, musicians often write the sixth in place of the fifth, and this is fine [thus including first inversion triads as perfect harmonies].
> 
> Zarlino goes on to state that it is often necessary to exclude one of the consonances in three part writing because of voice-leading considerations. But "to deprive compositions in four-parts of one of these consonances is shameful." ( - I love his moralizing tone, which makes the book more amusing than any counterpoint text has a right to be.) So, although he doesn't have a term for these configurations beyond "perfect harmony," Zarlino is clearly stating that what we call triads in root position and first inversion are the foundation of good harmonic practice and that they should always be used when it is possible to do so.
> 
> As an historical note, Zarlino was a student of Willaert, so there is a generation of remove between him and Josquin.
> 
> Oddly enough, Zarlino's book, including his exercises and cantus firmi, was the text for the first class I took in Renaissance counterpoint.


I'm not sure if this contradicts anything I wrote in my previous post.


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## EdwardBast

SanAntone said:


> I'm not sure if this contradicts anything I wrote in my previous post.


Perhaps the part about triads? But really, I think it supports your position very well. Obviously Zarlino is acutely aware of triads and their significance to vertical harmony, yet he only discusses them as combinations of intervals and never in any functional sense or in relation to any notion of harmonic progression. Which is pretty much what you were arguing.


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