Consecutive fifths
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In music, consecutive fifths (also known as parallel fifths) involve the concurrence of successive intervals of a perfect fifth between two voices in parallel motion; e.g., a parallel movement from C to D in one voice, and G to A in a higher voice. Intervening octaves are irrelevant to this aspect of musical grammar; for example, parallel 12ths (i.e., as created by successive intervals of an octave plus a fifth) are equivalent to parallel fifths.
During the common practice period, the use of consecutive fifths was strongly discouraged. This was primarily due to the notion of voice leading, which stresses the individual identity of voices. Because of the powerful presence of the fifth above the fundamental in the overtone series, the individuality of two parts is weakened when they move in parallel fifths.
Contents |
[edit] Development of the prohibition
Singing in consecutive fifths may have originated from the accidental singing of a chant a perfect fifth above (or a perfect fourth below) the proper pitch. Whatever its origin, singing in parallel fifths became commonplace in early organum and conductus styles. Around 1300, Johannes de Grocheo became the first theorist to prohibit the practice. However, parallel fifths were still common in 14th-century music. The early 15th century composer Lionel Powers likewise forbade the motion of "2 acordis perfite of one kynde, as 2 unisouns, 2 5ths, 2 8ths, 2 12ths, 2 15ths," and it is with the transition to Renaissance-style counterpoint that the use of parallel perfect consonances was consistently avoided in practice.
Composers avoided writing consecutive fifths between two independent parts, such as tenor and bass lines.
The fifths did not have to be undisguised, or the only two notes of a melodic line. The interval may form part of a chord of any number of notes, and may be set well apart from the rest of the harmony, or finely interwoven in its midst. But the interval was always to be quitted by any movement that did not land on another fifth.
The prohibition concerning fifths did not just apply to perfect fifths. Some theorists objected also to the progression from a perfect fifth to a diminished fifth in parallel motion; for example the progression from C and G to B and F (B and F forming a diminished fifth).
The strict avoidance of consecutive fifths is one of the major reasons some musicologists doubt whether Johann Sebastian Bach composed the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Bach was an accomplished composer, highly skilled at avoiding consecutive fifths, but the toccata abounds with them.
As music moved on into the 19th century, composers like Grieg helped to liberate the consecutive fifth in works like 'Les Cloches'. By the 20th century, such works had become commonplace and completely acceptable. Nevertheless, music students analyze them even today to improve harmonic subtlety and develop their aural and theoretical awareness.
The identification and avoidance of perfect fifths in the instruction of counterpoint and harmony help to distinguish the more formal idiom of classical music from popular and folk musics, in which consecutive fifths commonly appear in the form of double tonics and shifts of level. The prohibition of consecutive fifths in European classical music originates not only in the requirement for contrary motion in counterpoint but in a gradual and eventually self-conscious attempt to distance classical music from folk traditions. As Sir Donald Tovey explains in his discussion of Joseph Haydn's Symphony no. 88, "The trio is one of Haydn's finest pieces of rustic dance music, with hurdy-gurdy drones which shift in disregard of the rule forbidding consecutive fifths. The disregard is justified by the fact that the essential objection to consecutive fifths is that they produce the effect of shifting hurdy-gurdy drones." (van der Merwe 1989, p.210)
[edit] Related progressions
[edit] Parallel octaves and fourths
Consecutive fifths are avoided in part because they cause a loss of individuality between parts. This lack of individuality is even more pronounced when parts move in parallel octaves or in unison. These are therefore also generally forbidden among independently moving parts.
The literature deals with consecutive perfect fourths less systematically, but theorists have often restricted their use. Theorists commonly disallow consecutive perfect fourths involving the lowest part, especially between the lowest part and the highest part.
[edit] Hidden consecutives
Hidden consecutives occur when two independent parts approach a single perfect fifth or an octave by similar motion instead of oblique or contrary motion. Conventional style dictates that such an interval, often called an exposed fifth or exposed octave, be avoided. They are sometimes permitted under certain conditions, such as the following: the interval does not involve either the highest or the lowest part, the interval does not occur between both of those extreme parts, the interval is approached in one part by a semitone step, or the interval is approached in the higher part by step. The details differ considerably from period to period, and even among composers writing in the same period.
[edit] Special uses and exceptions in early music
Consecutive fifths are typically used to evoke the sound of music in medieval times or exotic places. The use of parallel fifths (or fourths) to refer to the sound of traditional Chinese or other kinds of Eastern music was once commonplace in film scores and songs. Since these passages are an obvious oversimplification and parody of the styles that they seek to evoke, this use of parallel fifths declined during the last half of the 20th century.
In Iceland, the traditional song style known as tvísöngur, "twin-singing", goes back to the Middle Ages and is still taught in schools today. In this style, a melody is sung against itself, typically in parallel fifths.
Consecutive fifths (as well as fourths and octaves) are commonly used to mimic the sound of Gregorian plainsong. This practice is well-founded in early European musical traditions. Plainsong was originally sung in unison, not in fifths, but by the ninth century there is evidence that singing in parallel intervals (fifths, octaves, and fourths) commonly ornamented the performance of chant. This is documented in the anonymous ninth-century theory treatises known as Musica enchiriadis and Scolica enchiriadis. These treatises use Dasian music notation, based on four-note patterns called tetrachords, which easily notates parallel fifths. This notation predates Guido of Arezzo's solmization, which divides the scale into six-note patterns called hexachords, and the modern octave-based staff notation into which Guido's gamut evolved.
[edit] External links
- Hopkins, Pandora and Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson: Iceland, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 8 June 2006), Grove Music - Access by subscription only
[edit] References
- Jeppeson, Knud. Counterpoint: the polyphonic vocal style of the sixteenth century, English translation 1939, reprint by Dover, NY, 1992. ISBN 0-486-27036-X.
- Meech, Sanford. "Three Musical Treatises in English from a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript", Speculum X.3, July 1935.
- Tovey, Donald Francis. Essays in musical analysis, vol. 1, p. 142. Quoted in van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.
