Proposal for a Grammar of Melody: The Bach Chorales

148 Pages·147.071 MB·English

by  Mario Baroni, Carlo Jacoboni

PROPOSALF OR A
-
GRAMMARO F MELODY
UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
ML
Lf-l+O
.1333
TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN BY THE AUTHORS
1978
LES PRESSES DE L'UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL
C.P. 6128, SUCC. •A», MONTREAL, QUE., CANADA H3C 3J7
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TABLEO F CONTENTS
Pages
INTRODUCTION 9
CHAP. I - THEO BJECTA NDM ETHOODFS THEA NALYSIS 15
I .1 The object 15
1.2 The method 24
CHAP. II - THEA NALYS-ISG ENERACLH ARACTERISTICS 33
11.1 The notes : features and values 33
11.2 Movementsa nd transitions - Decorations 43
II.3 Decoration and tie transformations 46
11.4 Classification of decorations 50
11.5 Fields 54
CHAP. I I I - THER ULES 61
lII.l The configuration of the phrases 63
III.2 The transitions 66
a. The first note 66
b. The first transition 67
c. The transitions of the central body 69
Observation 70
Observation 2 73
Obser va ti on 3 74
d. The anticadential transitions 78
III.3 The cadence 80
a. The basic notes of the cadence 81
b. The cadential decorations 84
III.4 Contextual constraints 88
a. Ties 89
b. Skips 91
Observation 4 91
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c. Mobile degrees 99
d. Decorati ans 101
e. Recurrences 103
Observation 5 107
f. Body-cadence relationships 109
g. General rules of movement 112
h. Relationships between the phrases 119
CHAP. IV - THEG ENERATIPORNO GRAM 123
IV. l General scheme of the program 123
IV.2 The duration of the phrases 126
IV.3 The use of random numbers 127
IV.4 The first note of the first phrase 129
IV.5 The principle of a priori equiprobability 129
IV.6 The construction of the phrases 132
IV.7 Global controls 133
IV.8 The printing of the phrases 135
TABLES 137
APPENDICES 143
REFERENCES 153
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INTRODUCTION*
This work is an attempt to resolve some of the problems of musical
language scientifically. Obviously, speaking about a scientific approach to
music is as vague and imprecise as speaking about a scientific approach to man
this we know composers appreciate, having also discussed with some of them the
import and results of our work. Their objections arise mainly from the natural
conception that music is a universal and synthetic fact of such intricate com
plexity that it is impossible to confront with the pretension of scientific
definitions. The opinions of those who live and experience every day this
complex phenomenonc annot be ignored. No one more than the musician himself
knows how, in music, emotive facts and personal memories continually mingle,
how social and cultural environment, not to mention perceptional data and
problems about the structure of sound, are inseparably tied together in such a
way as to prove most discouraging to anyone with ambitions to investigate this
* Note on graphic conventions
In this note we list some graphic conventions adopted in the present work;
we also indicate the page of the text in which these conventions are explained.
G - F transition page 64
~
G - F(S-) transition JJ J page 64
G !tC
descending interval ~ page 67
G! C
A/A transition J I J page 70
/A-A/ transition j j page 70
Chorale 11+ Chorale 11 of Appendix
land its variants page 64
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this field. If Galileo, however, instead of observing objects rolling down
inclined surfaces had taken up the search of the secret of the philosophers'
stone, he would have remained one amongm any other alchemists and not the
founder of modern experimental science.
Thus, our proposed enquiry is well limited and anything but compre
hensive. Wea re making an attempt to examine some musical structures in order
to see to what extent it is possible to identify certain scientific principles
based on an account of their structural processes. Wet urn our attention only
to the sign on its own, not to the man, and neither, we must stress, to the sign
intended in its full context, but only to the sign as significant, to use a
semiological terminology to which, from time to time, we have had recourse.
Wea lso appreciate the fact that musical semiology is an extremely
young branch of science, still a long way from having its own, well defined
investigative methods and, in this respect, our work is an attempt to contribute
something to the discussions and building up of these methods. Such efforts owe
their value to another factor also. A great part of the experience out of which
musical semiology has developed has been the analysis of the relationships between
verbal and musical structures, which has involved attempts to transfer, often
too directly, linguistic methodology and principles elaborated in the linguistic
~
context, into music analysis. Efforts have also been made to clarify a number
of epistemological problems connected with attempts to include music in the wider
field of general semiotics(l). Both directions have led us to a point where,
(1) For a general picture of the situation in semiotics today, cf. U. Eco
(1975), also U. Valli, 0. Calabrese, and P. Magli (1974), and, specifi
cally in regard to musical semiology, J.J. Nattiez (1975).
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with a framework of concepts and with some related experience, we can begin
some serious investigative work in this field.
However, the framework on which musical semiology is based is still
very fragile and this is because a large amount of methodological and epistemo
logical research has not been accompanied by equally productive work on specific
and concrete problems of analysis. Only by concentrating on problems that have
directly arisen from research on musical language, will we able to question or
confirm the theoretical apparatus we have had at our disposal at this stage.
This is another of the motives that moved us to make our analysis.
In our work, we make use also of the computer, and so perhaps it is
~
appropriate at this point to make some observations. The computer's ability
to calculate and to perform formalized elaborations are much superior to man's
and for this reason the computer will be a very useful aid. Nevertheless, we
feel that in studying something as complex and elusive as music (this is also
true of the apparently very elementary texts we have studied), it is notsufficient
simply to find numerable and comparable structures, but one has also to select
from all the structures one can identify in an objective manner, those YJhicha re
useful for an analysis of the larger aspects of musical communication. For this
reason, in our opinion, some of the mathematical and in particular statistical
investigations which have taken place in recent years, especially in American
musicology, possess a sort of inertia which may render them, to some extent,
fruitless. For the same reason, we find the epistemological work mentioned
above useful. Also the use of the computer in our analysis is to be seen from
this particular point of view.
Our task is that of generating a sort of grammarw ith which we can
describe the musical texts we have chosen for study. Such a grammar, if it
were complete, would be able to generate examples of the studied language
different from the original ones we began with, as happens with the grammars of
natural languages. One can thus speak of a sort of generative grammar of the
studied texts, giving the term a more general meaning without precise parallels
with the formal Chomskyana pproach. The relative simplicity of the sample we have
chosen has helped us in our attempt at an effective production of musical structures
using our grammar (or, rather, our collection of rules). It is at this point
that the computer comes into play, precisely as a generator of musical phrases.
It is, in fact, an automatic generator unintelligent enough to guarantee that
the results are not the products of a subjective or creative interpretation of
the rules, but rather are derived directly from the rules themselves.
At this point usually composers prick up their ears and start making
objections about generated phrases. To such objections we usually answer that
these pieces do not have to be "beautiful" but just "correct". With this answer,
however, we are entering extremely dangerous territory. Wew onder, in fact, if
there exists in musical language, as in verbal language, a distinction that can
be drawn between the grammarw e use for day to day communication and that of
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poetical language which has different structures and functions. Our answer tends
to the negative : it is difficult for us to find a qualitative difference between
two corresponding kinds of rules, and therefore we have not adopted such a dis
tinction in our work. It is also worth noting that for musical analysis, as a
science at the embryonic stage, it is not fitting to take a stance on this parti
cular problem. Only a lot of experimental work delving into the problem of
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musical semantics will provide further elements for the solution of this problem( ).
(2) N. Ruwet (1975 : 26) tends, on the contrary, to make a distinction between
grammatical and aesthetical levels in musical language when he proposes a
project of analysis of counterpoint exercises. "Un exercice de contrepoint
doit se conformer a un ensemble de regles tres strictes, qui sont formulees
explicitement dans les traites, mais aussi a certains principes implicites,
auxquels recourt constamment tout ban professeur. L'explicitation de ces
principes ... ne devrait pas etre une entreprise impossible, etant donne
precisement le caractere simplifie du materiel ... L'interet de ce travail
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Nowi t only remains to say that this research is an enlargement of the
communication (Baroni-Jacoboni 1975) given on the same subject at the First
International Congress on Semiotics of Music (Belgrade, oct. 1973). The organi
zation of the paper is however different: we have divided the work into four
chapters. In the first we talk about the~criteria we have used in selecting the
corpus of music we have investigated and also about the general methodological
factors that determined this choice. The second chapter is devoted to the study
of the material out of which our selected phrases have been made. In the third,
we deal with the results of our analysis, which are given by a set of 56 rules.
The last chapter is reserved for a brief outline of the computer program used
for the automatic generation of phrases.
serait de fournir une voie d'approche, encore modeste, a une etude objec
tive des jugements de valeur esthetique en musique." From the results
arrived at in our work, which set out on lines not dissimilar to Ruwet's,
we conclude that the distinction he makes between judgements of correct
ness and judgements of value is inappropriate. Wec an say, from what the
generating process revealed, that the evidence has not been sufficient
for us to confirm the existence of such a clear distinction. The elimi
nation of phrases that we regard as being incorrect and of those which
we regard as inelegant, which brings us progressively nearer to the ori
ginal model, has been only possible through the gradual identification of
rules which are ever more minute and refined, but not qualitatively diffe
rent from each other.
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CHAPTEIR - THEO BJECTA NDM ETHODOSF THEA NALYSIS
I.1. The object
The present work forms the first part of a larger project of an
analysis of the chorales for four voices by J.S. Bach. Here we will take into
consideration only certain fragments from the corpus of chorales, namely the
first two soprano phrases that are in major mode, without modulations, and that
are in 4/4 time(l).
Weh ave chosen to limit ourselves to such small components of the
whole for two reasons : to make a more exhaustive study of the chosen texts and
to explain as clearly as possible our methodology, that is, to render the approa
ches used in the analysis explicit.
To the limits concerning the object of the study, there is another limit
to add regarding the content of the analysis. A musical text, even when it is
reduced and fragmented, as it is in our case, is a complex entity whose struc-
ture is tied to the functions of communication. The process of communication which
the text is destined to establish could be analyzed on different levels, and for
this reason we must first clarify to which of these levels our analysis is aimed
if it is directed at a study of the production of the text (i.e., the relations
(1) Weh ave taken all the chorales in the Bach Ausgabe, including those which are
not present in the collection by J.Ph. Kirnberger and K.Ph.E. Bach, and which
therefore do not appear in the alphabetically ordered list of chorales made
by Schmieder (1950 : 380-387). In order to help the reader to identify the
single melodies, in Appendix l we have given three distinct numerations, from
the BWVf, rom the first Bach Ausgabe, and, where it exists, also from the
Neue Bach Ausgabe. In this section, however, we will only use the BWV
numeration although for the rest of the text, once the sample has been
defined., th.e p.rog.ressi ve numeration of Appendix l will be used.
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between the composer and the work) or at a study of the fruition of the work
(i.e~ the relations between the finished work and those for which it is intended),
or at a study of the structure of the text as a neutral object taken out of these
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contexts of production and fruition( ). Our analysis concentrates on the latter
approach.
For an exhaustive analysis as explicit as we should like it to be,
the problem about the choice of material to undergo analysis is a particularly
delicate one. Such material has to have two fundamental characteristics :
maximumex tension and homogeneity. The former condition must guarantee a suffi
cient number of examples for the study from which we can derive precise struc
tural hypotheses and the latter condition is essential in order to avoid contra
dictions in this set of hypotheses.
Hoping to find in these pieces some features that indicate the presence
of a grammatical structure, as with the linguistic approach that examines natural
languages, we encounter one particular problem: western musical tradition, the
area in which our study will remain, is characterized by the great variety and
instability of musical codes. Between the code, (here one means a set of con
ventions that insures communication to a certain social group) and the composer
(upon whomt his group lays the task of music production), there exists an uneasy
relationship, this rapport not being based on mere acceptance, but proving to
~
(2) The distinction between these three levels defined as "poietique, esthesique
et neutre", respectively, which has been used by J. Molino (1975 : 46-49)
on the guidelines laid downb y Paul Valery and Etienne Gilson, has been
also used by J.J. Nattiez (1975), and systematically studied by G. Naud
(1975). Wea lso find the tripartition useful in our present work.