# Chopin's late style



## Felix Mendelssohn (Jan 18, 2019)

I often hear that Chopin's style was developed early and stayed the same throughout his life. Yet today I decided to revisit his works and realised he used counterpoint in certain late mazurkas, the Polonaise-Fantasie, and the fourth ballade. And the Berceuse seemed somewhat impressionistic.

Was wondering what he would have accomplished had he lived longer. Would he have turned to the more logical and structural side of music, as in the Germanic tradition? Or would he have ventured into other instruments? (I like his cello sonata)

Liszt's biggest achievements in keyboard begin in his post-1848 period, where he settled in Weimar and focused on composing, and he started churning out masterpieces like the sonata. That date roughly coincides with Chopin's death in 1849. Liszt thus secured a place as one of the greats of the keyboard. However, had Chopin lived on, would Liszt have remained in Chopin's shadow? Or would Chopin's harmonic innovations become so advanced that he suffered from the same fate of Lizst (who wasn't much appreciated by his conservative contemporaries)?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

We can make a speculation based on the last things he said.

_"In a journal entry dated 7 April 1849, Eugène Delacroix asked Chopin about musical logic. Chopin's response illustrates his views on the essential nature of counterpoint within musical structure:

"I asked him to explain what it is that gives the impression of logic in music. He made me understand the meaning of harmony and counterpoint; how in music the fugue corresponds to pure logic, and that to be well versed in the fugue is to understand the elements of all reason and development in music"."_

Because of his tendencies, I see Chopin more as a 'classicist' (like Brahms) clothed in Romantic style.






I think he would have surpassed Hummel concertos if he wrote more concertos later in life. Allegro de Concert Op.43 was meant to be written as a concerto. He was a genius, (certainly one of the greatest in melody) but died early without really having had a good teacher.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

An interesting discussion. I have read that the appearance of Chopin's Etudes, on the printed page, appears much like Bach's keyboard preludes. Perhaps a thin evidence, but the suggestion is clear.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

KenOC said:


> An interesting discussion. I have read that the appearance of Chopin's Etudes, on the printed page, appears much like Bach's keyboard preludes. Perhaps a thin evidence, but the suggestion is clear.


Hm... I can see that for some of the etudes, others not so much.

However, Op. 10 no. 1 clearly alludes to the C major Prelude from WTC book 1.


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## Felix Mendelssohn (Jan 18, 2019)

KenOC said:


> I have read that the appearance of Chopin's Etudes, on the printed page, appears much like Bach's keyboard preludes.


WTC Prelude no.1 in C major and Chopin op.10 no.1 perhaps? This was one I noticed immediately.

Edit: someone beat me to it


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Felix Mendelssohn said:


> I often hear that Chopin's style was developed early and stayed the same throughout his life. Yet today I decided to revisit his works and realised he used counterpoint in certain late mazurkas, the Polonaise-Fantasie, and the fourth ballade. And the Berceuse seemed somewhat impressionistic.
> 
> Was wondering what he would have accomplished had he lived longer. Would he have turned to the more logical and structural side of music, as in the Germanic tradition? Or would he have ventured into other instruments? (I like his cello sonata)
> 
> Liszt's biggest achievements in keyboard begin in his post-1848 period, where he settled in Weimar and focused on composing, and he started churning out masterpieces like the sonata. That date roughly coincides with Chopin's death in 1849. Liszt thus secured a place as one of the greats of the keyboard. However, had Chopin lived on, would Liszt have remained in Chopin's shadow? Or would Chopin's harmonic innovations become so advanced that he suffered from the same fate of Lizst (who wasn't much appreciated by his conservative contemporaries)?


Part of the problem is that the piano players can come to Chopin with prejudices about style, and as a result they can hide the polyphonic tendency in the late music. Anyway the counterpoint is less a matter of two voices creating harmonies when they make chords, and more a matter of two voices dancing around each other, a duet for two hands, like Cage's piano etudes. The best place to hear the development is in the big cycles which he was occupied with all his composing career -- mazurkas especially.


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## Guest (Feb 14, 2019)

I wonder what would have happened if he met Debussy, like Liszt did.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

HSW said:


> I wonder what would have happened if he met Debussy, like Liszt did.


Possibly he would have stayed awake, unlike Liszt.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Part of the problem is that the piano players can come to Chopin with prejudices about style, and as a result they can hide the polyphonic tendency in the late music. Anyway the counterpoint is less a matter of two voices creating harmonies when they make chords, and more a matter of two voices dancing around each other, a duet for two hands, like Cage's piano etudes. The best place to hear the development is in the big cycles which he was occupied with all his composing career -- mazurkas especially.


A common misconception about homophony is that it is one voice accompanied by bass chords whereas polyphony consists of multiple voices. If the voices shift pitch at the same time, even though they all have melodic qualities of their own, they're still considered homophonic. Well-written homophony actually has richer harmony and part-writing than poorly-written polyphony. Bach's chorales are examples of good homophony. (And many of the solo violin, cello pieces demonstrate his mastery of monophony, so Bach practically mastered pretty much all textures.)


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## Guest (Feb 14, 2019)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Possibly he would have stayed awake, unlike Liszt.


I don't recall reading anything about Liszt not staying awake.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Why should there not be elements of counterpoint in Chopin's works when to his students he would recommend they play Bach daily to strengthen their hands and wrists? And, of course, he did so by reasons of the logic of the music and keeping better time, while at the same time he taught them the important use of rubato. He learned Bach from the wisdom of his beloved teacher Elsner, a man who understood Chopin's genius from the beginning and did not want it spoiled by others. He provided Chopin with a strong technical background based on reason and logic which Chopin maintained throughout his life, but not to be known as a writer of fugues to satisfy the impossible to please academics.

He was taught well by Elsner what he wanted to learn. But he thought of himself as more of a revolutionary-and he was-than a traditionalist, out to create a new world, and he did by broadening the emotional range during the romantic era, melodically and harmonically. He could also be ferocious in attitude in his Scherzi and Polonaise. There's hardly anything in his music that he didn't touch upon, from love to sarcasm to the heroic to the most ultra-refined in attitude and mood. He mostly just used the piano to do it rather than the orchestra.

Chopin was aware of counterpoint, including in some of his late works. There's the noticeable use of it in the slow movement of his late work Cello Sonata, the last piece he wrote:






But nothing has been said about his other late works when he was already taking the music into the future. Two worth pointing out are his Fantasy in F Minor, Op 49 and Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major, Op. 60. _These works seem to float and stretch time in a new way... _he was already taking the music into the future, and it's no wonder that Chopin was such a major influence on Debussy.

In the Barcarolle, there's a wider expanse of form and ambient sense of sound in his usually imaginative way, a greater maturity and richness of style, more patience, something _timeless_ about it, something more atmospheric and ambient than before. This was his mature style. The music is bigger in scope and mood if one listens carefully. But as always, there was the enormous harmonic clarity and precision in what he wrote that was underneath it all, highly inspired by Bach and Mozart. Ultimately, what he did in his later works was to stretch and expand how time was perceived in music. He changed how it was portrayed by deepening and broadening it. He expanded the spaciousness and atmosphere of sound.





===
"I think he would have surpassed Hummel concertos if he wrote more concertos later in life."

Chopin had already surpassed Hummel. After more than almost 170 years, both Chopin Piano Concertos are performed just as much today as they've always been. When was the last time anyone heard a Hummel Piano Concerto regularly performed live? He's been virtually forgotten. Chopin superseded Hummel by taking what Hummel did a great deal farther in his melodic genius, his technical brilliance, his harmonic development, his boldness and far greater emotional range, just about in everything, though owing a great debt to Hummel in modeling his own concertos after his.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

HSW said:


> I don't recall reading anything about Liszt not staying awake.


Ernest Hébert had invited Debussy to meet Liszt at a dinner party. When Debussy began playing a two piano arrangement of Liszt's Faust Symphony he noticed that Liszt had fallen asleep. You can read the story on page 32 of Eric Frederick Jensen's excellent biography of Debussy.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> A common misconception about homophony is that it is one voice accompanied by bass chords whereas polyphony consists of multiple voices. If the voices shift pitch at the same time, even though they all have melodic qualities of their own, they're still considered homophonic. Well-written homophony actually has richer harmony and part-writing than poorly-written polyphony. Bach's chorales are examples of good homophony. (And many of the solo violin, cello pieces demonstrate his mastery of monophony, so Bach practically mastered pretty much all textures.)


In early music there's the style of heterophony where two or more voices may sing the same tune together , slightly differently. It's one of the styles which for reasons I can't explain, I love. There's a series of recordings with Paul Hillier called _Conductus_ which has a lot of heterophony, they're some of my favourite recordings.

Genuinely monophonic music is so hard for performers to bring off, especially for a listener who doesn't know the language spontaneously. The musician has nowhere to hide. You need a singer who's gifted at diction, and there aren't many!


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## Guest (Feb 14, 2019)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> When Debussy began playing a two piano arrangement of Liszt's Faust Symphony he noticed that Liszt had fallen asleep.


This kinda reminds me of Brahms and Liszt's B minor sonata. But at least Liszt had old age as an excuse.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> A common misconception about homophony is that it is one voice accompanied by bass chords whereas polyphony consists of multiple voices. If the voices shift pitch at the same time, even though they all have melodic qualities of their own, they're still considered homophonic. Well-written homophony actually has richer harmony and part-writing than poorly-written polyphony. Bach's chorales are examples of good homophony. (And many of the solo violin, cello pieces demonstrate his mastery of monophony, so Bach practically mastered pretty much all textures.)


I don't believe that is right. Homophony doesn't mean the rhythms in all voices move together, but that they complement the main melody.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't believe that is right. Homophony doesn't mean the rhythms in all voices move together, but that* they complement the main melody.*


That's the most simplified definition of homophony, but there are examples of 'complex' homophony where individual voices are singable melodies and blurs the line between harmony and counterpoint.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> That's the most simplified definition of homophony, but there are examples of 'complex' homophony where individual voices are singable melodies and blurs the line between harmony and counterpoint.


Phil has it right. Homophony doesn't mean all voices move together. In fact, they usually don't. It means a single independent melody with supporting harmony where none of the other voices rivals the main one - melody and accompaniment in a chordal style. Usually this entails a relatively slow or moderate _harmonic rhythm_ (meaning the rate at which harmonies change).

Bach's chorales are not homophonic because the bass lines (at least) tend to have too much melodic weight and independence and the harmonic rhythm is quite fast. The opening of Beethoven's Sonata in A major, op. 101, is clearly contrapuntal for the same reasons, despite the fact that the voices move in roughly the same rhythm:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Phil has it right. Homophony doesn't mean all voices move together. In fact, they usually don't. It means a single independent melody with supporting harmony where none of the other voices rivals the main one - melody and accompaniment in a chordal style. Usually this entails a relatively slow or moderate _harmonic rhythm_ (meaning the rate at which harmonies change).
> 
> Bach's chorales are not homophonic because the bass lines (at least) tend to have too much melodic weight and independence and the harmonic rhythm is quite fast. The opening of Beethoven's Sonata in A major, op. 101, is clearly contrapuntal for the same reasons, despite the fact that the voices move in roughly the same rhythm:






_"homophonic texture is when one voice or melody stands out from the background accompaniment, or where chords move together with the theme. ... Church hymns illustrate this well."_ -Brent Stewart, Music Director of The Orpheus Choir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorale
_Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale:

-Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one of the themes in the Finale of Saint-Saëns's Third Symphony)
-Such tune with a harmonic accompaniment (e.g. chorale monody, chorales included in Schemellis Gesangbuch)
-Such a tune presented in a homophonic or homorhythmic harmonisation, usually four-part harmony (e.g. Bach's four-part chorales, or the chorale included in the second movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony)
-A more complex setting of a hymn(-like) tune (e.g. chorale fantasia form in Bach's Schübler Chorales, or a combination of compositional techniques in César Franck's Three Chorales [fr])_


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> _"homophonic texture is when one voice or melody stands out from the background accompaniment, *or* where chords move together with the theme. ... Church hymns illustrate this well."_ -Brent Stewart, Music Director of The Orpheus Choir
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorale
> _Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale:
> ...


You missed the crucial word "or." The essential definition comes before the or. And "Church hymns" are not Bach chorales. Many hymn settings are homophonic. Bach's chorales often aren't.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> You missed the crucial word "or." The essential definition comes before the or. And "Church hymns" are not Bach chorales. Many hymn settings are homophonic. Bach's chorales often aren't.


That's my point. Chords moving together counts as homophony.














Bach chorales were originally meant to be used as church hymns, not any other like stage, concert, dance, or march music.






So this section in Chopin Fantasy Op.49 is homophony (5:00~6:00)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

No it doesn't if one or more of the other lines has independent melodic integrity. BWV 267 ^ ^ ^ for example, is not homophonic by any stretch of the imagination. The same is true of 100 others.

Re the Chopin: Parts of the passage are, others aren't.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> No it doesn't if one or more of the other lines has independent melodic integrity. BWV 267 ^ ^ ^ for example, is not homophonic by any stretch of the imagination. The same is true of 100 others.
> 
> Re the Chopin: Parts of the passage are, others aren't.


But what exactly is 'independent melodic integrity'? Bach does have supreme singable quality even in bass accompaniments, but are they enough to make all his homophonic utterances 'polyphonic'? The problem with your claim is that you could say the same about so many other cases. It's hard to define a clear line that divides something that has 'independent melodic integrity' and something that doesn't. 
Take the left hand octaves of Chopin Prelude Op.28 No.20 in C minor for example:






If one argues that "It's still a melody on its own, it's just not a great melody." This piece would be considered a contrapuntal composition, as much as it is a harmonic composition.
This is just as confusing as the discussion we had on the definition of 'melody'. (To be honest, I was a bit confused A Question of Melodists: Is Schubert really a more talented melodist than Beethoven? cause you seemed to be saying 'every musical expression' = 'melody' in the thread.)


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I believe that Chopin Prelude is clearly homophonic. The notes in the left hand harmony is pretty much contained in the right hand, and just accompanies the right hand, which contains the melody. The Bach Chorale had at least 1 independent melody in the left hand.

The male voices in this hymn aren't really independent from the woman's voices, so would count as homophony.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"So this section in Chopin Fantasy Op.49 is homophony (5:00~6:00)




"

This is not homophonic in the same sense that the Bach hymns are, which are essentially moving in block chords; but there is a homophonic element to it though it's obvious that Chopin is not writing a hymn or choral work. Even one look at his manuscript would show that there is far more going on over Chopin's _Bach-like baseline_ and the baseline often moves in contrary motion to the melodic line in the right hand-they're moving in opposite directions.

But was he capable of homophonic writing? And did he do it quite often? Yes! But the critics want to put the knock on him that it was the _only_ way he wrote, that he was incapable of decent counterpoint, or that he was nothing but a repeat of a baseline over which he wrote a melody. They want to reduce him to that, and that doesn't float, it doesn't work as a piece of wholesale criticism.

Actually, it's patently false with many examples being found in his Mazurkas, Polonaise and Scherzi. He did not write homophonically all the time. But why shouldn't he sometimes write that way? It seems that if it was good enough for Bach then it should be good enough for Chopin, since Bach was one of his primary influences along with Mozart, Field, and Hummel.

What are the critics missing when he's writing homophonically? Chopin's incredible harmonic voicings that sound just as modern today as they probably did in his day. But they would hear it if they slowed everything down and went through them chord by chord. That was one of the revolutionary changes he made in his music. He split up chords, voiced and expanded them beyond the range of the octave. One can hear him do this in his very first étude.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe that Chopin Prelude is clearly homophonic. The notes in the left hand harmony is pretty much contained in the right hand, and just accompanies the right hand, which contains the melody. The Bach Chorale had at least 1 independent melody in the left hand.
> 
> The male voices in this hymn aren't really independent from the woman's voices, so would count as homophony.


Sure, in the more 'contrapuntally dense' chorales there's certain 'contrapuntal elements' found, but they're mostly limited to some canonic imitation, you can find this much counterpoint in many other compositions by Bach himself and other composers, that are considered 'harmonic'.






There isn't constant canonic imitation going on in the way a canon would. In its mostly-harmonic setting, you can point out certain contrapuntal elements, 
but it isn't a work of constant counterpoint with invertible counterpoint, inversion, strettos, augmentation (in the way 2-cello Bocherini fugues would be, for example 



)
and analysis on counterpoint is limited cause it's more like a 'harmonic composition with richly varied harmonic accompaniment'. (as Beethoven said of Bach, "god of harmony")

Remember those video presentations on fortepiano by Malcolm Bilson I cited in the thread about HIP, he used a violinist-cellist analogy (



) to describe a Mozart sonata as having "the left hand just as important as the right hand." Also the one where Robert Levin explained "we hear natural balance" (



)
In this respect, the left-hand part of the outer A minor sections of K310 third movement strikes me as being singable.






but it would still be considered a 'harmonic composition'.

I would say this is why they always analyze Bach chorales harmonically, and not contrapuntally.


















these videos are all done by the same guy


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

All the above are clearly contrapuntal to me, except that particular Bach chorale. To reduce it to moving vertical harmony as in "harmonic composition with richly varied harmonic accompaniment" would be missing out a large part of independency of the melodies of the music, like looking at a 3D object in 2D. Counterpoint is not outside of harmony in general, the melodic lines are still interdependent or related, bad counterpoint has completely independent melodies that have nothing to do with each other in harmony.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing I want to say about Bach chorales, I'm not sure how true it is. I once heard that in a performance of the passions the chorales would have been sung by the congregation, in fact I once was at a St Matthew Passion where the audience joined in the chorales. That might explain why they're pretty simple.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> All the above are clearly contrapuntal to me, except that particular Bach chorale. To reduce it to moving vertical harmony as in "harmonic composition with richly varied harmonic accompaniment" would be missing out a large part of independency of the melodies of the music, like looking at a 3D object in 2D. Counterpoint is not outside of harmony in general, the melodic lines are still interdependent or related, bad counterpoint has completely independent melodies that have nothing to do with each other in harmony.







_"BWV 267 ^ ^ ^ for example, is not homophonic by any stretch of the imagination."_
What I'm saying is, if one claims a composition contrapuntal just because there is a line that does 'something different' from the 'melody' then he would have to apply the same logic to many other compositions that are supposedly 'harmonic'.

This is the canonic imitation of the trio of German Dance for Orchestra No.1 from Mozart K586:









As I mentioned in another thread, Haydn and Mozart, from their rigorous study of archaic counterpoint (and supposedly under influence of enlightenment ideals of equality 



), developed this technique called "Thematische Arbeit":
_"People near the time gave this new, more complex texture a severe-sounding German name; they called it thematische Arbeit, thematic working - all elements of the ensemble are independent (and individual), but each works with the others to produce the total effect."_ https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/mozart-quartet-in-c-major-k465-dissonance/ and this is why many passages in their ensembles sound like each instrument has its own voice. Even in their lighter pieces, albeit to limited extent.

I'm saying that, if we were to apply the logic (like the one some of us did with Bach chorale) to other supposedly 'harmonic' pieces, there would be tons and tons that should be 'redefined' as being contrapuntal. 
Homophony doesn't strictly imply 'one melody + accompaniment'. That's a misconception.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> One thing I want to say about Bach chorales, I'm not sure how true it is. I once heard that in a performance of the passions the chorales would have been sung by the congregation, in fact I once was at a St Matthew Passion where the audience joined in the chorales. That might explain why they're pretty simple.


One advantage of homophony over polyphony in liturgical works is you can generally over a lot more lyrics for a given time.
There was limited time allocated to sing text. Continuous emphasis on short message statements like "Kyrie Eleison - Kyrie Eleison" or "Cum Sanctu Spiritu - Cum Sanctu Spiritu" all the time with limited amount of time given for a mass would have been not advisable. Composers weren't allowed to write contrapuntally all the time, the clergy didn't allow that. Hence there were chorales and mass settings known as 'Missa Brevis'.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> But what exactly is 'independent melodic integrity'? Bach does have supreme singable quality even in bass accompaniments, but are they enough to make all his homophonic utterances 'polyphonic'? The problem with your claim is that you could say the same about so many other cases. *It's hard to define a clear line that divides something that has 'independent melodic integrity' and something that doesn't.*
> Take the left hand octaves of Chopin Prelude Op.28 No.20 in C minor for example:
> 
> If one argues that "It's still a melody on its own, it's just not a great melody." This piece would be considered a contrapuntal composition, as much as it is a harmonic composition.
> This is just as confusing as the discussion we had on the definition of 'melody'. (To be honest, I was a bit confused A Question of Melodists: Is Schubert really a more talented melodist than Beethoven? cause you seemed to be saying 'every musical expression' = 'melody' in the thread.)


Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. In the Chopin prelude it isn't. One simply has to ask: What considerations went into the construction of the bass line? Were they harmonic or melodic/contrapuntal? In this case, clearly they were melodic/contrapuntal, especially from bar 5 on. The chromatic descending line is melodically essential, the identity of the prelude is completely dependent on it, and some of the chords don't scan as harmonic entities-they require contrapuntal explanations. For example, what does one make of the chord with A natural in the bass in bar 6? What about the one on B natural in bar 5? Is the F#a chord tone?

As for the Beethoven discussion, you were limiting the definition of melody roughly to "tunes." Given that much of the melodic writing in large scale instrumental works is in developmental passages or passages requiring variation, your limited definition just didn't cut it as a criterion for melodic skill. A great melodist in instrumental music of that period had to have a mastery of many melodic skills beyond writing "tunes."



hammeredklavier said:


> I would say this is why they always analyze Bach chorales harmonically, and not contrapuntally.


This is just incorrect. Analyzing a Bach chorale requires both contrapuntal and harmonic thinking. The reason Bach chorales are so useful pedagogically is because they are a perfect medium for teaching voice-leading, which is to say, the basic principles of counterpoint, as well as the workings of tonal grammar, that is, the principles of harmonic progression. It's both equally.


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