Parallel 5ths and 8ths

[judddanby]

@Rinaldo

And as long as a teacher can turn off their availability to students in a class.

Agreed that the “teacher-control” would be attractive (though I lack the imagination to conceive of how that option could be implemented in software such as Dorico).

That said, I found the drills in Artusi Music’s collection — complete with real-time parallels marked by “the machine” — to be very pedagogically useful. Rather than simply “making students lazy,” it in fact encouraged them to keep reworking an exercise until they could avoid the parallels. Then as a class we could talk about what voice-leading patterns they noticed which either led to or avoided the problem.

[Rinaldo]

@judddanby

(though I lack the imagination to conceive of how that option could be implemented in software such as Dorico).

I do too, and that’s why my reply was intended as basically a joke. I didn’t see how such a thing could be done. But I find the information in your response very interesting; thanks for passing it along. (I retired from teaching 5 years ago, so I suppose I should stay out of such discussions altogether.)

[judddanby]

@Rinaldo

And as long as a teacher can turn off their availability to students in a class.

@Rinaldo

my reply was intended as basically a joke

And an excellent one at that!! Darn! I missed it (like those parallels in a freshman exercise…). Drier than an all-gin martini, Stravinsky’s harp writing, or Paul Desmond’s alto sound. Apparently I need a humor-detection plugin in the Discourse forum platform….

Also retired from (full-time) teaching, @Rinaldo , but very happy to share a link to that online tool for any of our fellow users still “in the trenches.” Artusi really was a fantastic addition to the teaching/learning toolbox, it’s very well (and musically, for a set of theory and aural skills exercises) conceived, and they were very generous in offering everything free during pandemic lock-down, for which I remain grateful.

[Mark_Johnson]

@Rinaldo I’d argue that a whole career of teaching experience makes your perspective more relevant than that of most other users.

While Dorico can copy exercise pages and such, it isn’t designed specifically as a teaching tool. It sounds like Artusi is excellent.

[judddanby]

@Mark_Johnson

@Rinaldo I’d argue that a whole career of teaching experience makes your perspective more relevant than that of most other users.

I won’t argue with your argument, @Mark_Johnson !

[Major81]

Playing in a Punkrock band my entire youth, all of my „compositions“ of that time would be highlighted in deep red!

Many of the questions you ask are very good. But I still think, that many people would use a tool like this.

When I started „mastering“ my own music or things I produced on a budget, I discovered „ozone“. An AI-Based mastering-Tool, that suggests certain settings, that just didn’t come to my mind and that helped a lot to understand what works well. Still I had my own ears and my vision of how something should sound. And If I wanted that big bass bump… who cares.

Now I never use Ozone, because I better understand the things that were once suggested. It was more like a tutor. And so I think many people will use that tool in Dorico. It will be great for so many people. If you don’t like it. Don’t use it. Still it will be a good thing for all Dorico users, if it pulls more users over.

[Rinaldo]

@Mark_Johnson

While Dorico can copy exercise pages and such, it isn’t designed specifically as a teaching tool. It sounds like Artusi is excellent.

Of course it isn’t. But a teacher needs music-notation software for a variety of purposes (I taught orchestration in addition to theory, and history of musicals, and art song literature; and when not teaching I edited critical editions of musicals, as I still do), and ideally hopes for one tool to serve them all. But of course that may not be a fair or realistic expectation.

[rubberfingers]

The ability for a teacher to turn off checking won’t be effective. Students will find the Musescore plugin and it’ll spread through the class.

[prko]

I recently listened to Mozart’s ‘Das Veilchen’, K. 476. I am now 51 years old and almost over 35 years have passed since I last heard this piece. I think I last heard it when I was 17 or 16 if I remember correctly.

The parallel fifth between the fourth and fifth bars in the following score occurs between two phrases, but it’s not good. I’m certain that Mozart made a poor choice for this moment. (Mozart is my favourite composer.)

However, I have to say that this never bothered me before. This is what I want to say. The sense of reception of the parallel fifth is not an absolute musical reception.
Also, I want to know if my musical ear is weird. I was shocked when this thought occurred to me.

Mozart Das Veilchen, from the corresponding moment

[RaPaSa]

The Mozart fifths…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consecutive_fifths

[prko]

I have known the ‘Mozart Fifths’ since I was 16, and the Brahms Collection ‘Oktaven und Quinten u. A.’ since I was 19.
I do not think that knowledge and musical reception through listening have always coincided, although I think they are closely related.

[Mark_Johnson]

My freshman theory class made parallel 5ths seem to suddenly stand out to my ear. I would not have heard it in this Mozart example before that, but since then (1982) I can’t miss it, even just reading silently. And it’s not just noticing – it feels viscerally wrong, a little bit. I developed a reflex. Interestingly, the feeling doesn’t apply in other styles of music that make liberal use of parallelism. And there’s a grey area between, as in Brahms’s essay, where composers such as Mahler can write blatant parallels and I feel it’s neither a flaw nor part of a different style.

[John_Ruggero]

@prko I think your ears are correct and Mozart is OK here. The two chords belong to two different sections in different “keys”, mood and style, and separated by a rest. The D major triad ends the first part with a half cadence (an “interruption” in Schenkerian terms) and the E flat triad starts anew. In a sense the E flat triad relates back to the tonic triad that represents the first part rather than to the immediately preceeding V. A similar effect is heard in second movement of Beethoven’s op. 109 recapitulation where the ending chord of the development and the beginning chord are a chord succession but not a chord progression:

And a similar one from the last movement of Mozart’s piano sonata K. 280:

Now here is one from the third movement of Mozart’s pianos sonata K. 330. Not only are there parallel fifths, but he seems to be using a sort of V-IV chord progression ( if thought of as momentarily in C major)! Think he would have lost a lot of points on the theory test, but it sounds just fine to me. I believe the fifths and the progression are not “real”, but only apparent:

[judddanby]

As to the question behind the OP, I suspect that had Mozart been a Dorico user and posted a feature request for a parallel-checker plugin, Daniel’s and Lillie’s basic responses would have remained the same:

@dspreadbury

As we build out the scripting API in the future, I’m sure this is the kind of thing that some enterprising script developer could build.

@Lillie_Harris

We (the team) are aware of the request to implement some sort of voice leading checking mechanism.

@Lillie_Harris

Any further discussion on the merit or not of doing so in principle is sort of moot: some people use it, and we therefore consider that like we consider all feature requests.

As for such a feature’s potential — and hotly debated! — usefulness to composers (side-stepping Lillie’s point about pedagogy completely, and for those interested in continuing this musical discussion)…

(For Those Interested, Yet More Discussion of the Musicality of Parallel 5s and 8s:)

…an interesting — perhaps — and admittedly very particular use-case question in relation to @prko’s post above might be: "of what use to Mozart would the parallel-checker plugin have been while composing Das Veilchen? My answer is: “absolutely none.” I simply cannot imagine for one moment that he could have carelessly missed the blatant parallel motion — indeed, complete “planing” of all voices! — from m. 42 to 43.

Several among us react thus:

@prko

The parallel fifth between the fourth and fifth bars in the following score occurs between two phrases, but it’s not good. I’m certain that Mozart made a poor choice for this moment. (Mozart is my favourite composer.)

@Mark_Johnson

it feels viscerally wrong, a little bit

@John_Ruggero gives @prko some latitude due to his later comment:

@prko

However, I have to say that this never bothered me before. This is what I want to say. The sense of reception of the parallel fifth is not an absolute musical reception.

…then goes on to discuss phrase structure, cadences, etc.

@John_Ruggero

I think your ears are correct and Mozart is OK here. The two chords belong to two different sections in different “keys”, mood and style, and separated by a rest. The D major triad ends the first part with a half cadence (an “interruption” in Schenkerian terms) and the E flat triad starts anew. In a sense the E flat triad relates back to the tonic triad that represents the first part rather than to the immediately preceeding V.

I’d like to amplify on that a bit, starting with what I think is the most important question to ask of any work: Why?

Why would Mozart — obviously a composer capable of navigating the leading of voices effectively — choose to include these blatant parallels? Might there be some specific aesthetic effect he wanted? A leading question, that second one, I realize; but I do think one should always bring aesthetic generosity to analysis and judgement of others’ work.

I think the most important answer in this case is that it’s a song setting of a poem by Goethe that makes a significant dramatic shift at just the moment of the “objectionable” (to some) parallels (octaves as well as fifths, btw):

Das Veilchen
German source: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Violet
English translation © Richard Stokes
(Das Veilchen | Song Texts, Lyrics & Translations | Oxford Song)

What more musically appropriate way for a composer working within a style that “forbade” parallels to capture this sudden “heedless trampling” than “clumsy” voice leading? I think it’s pretty brilliant!

There’s considerable half-step/chromatic logic of melodic motion saturating this move through a seemingly conventional harmonic pattern: iv⁶ +⁶ V ♭VI. The SOP and BASS (orchestrationally doubled; “simplified out” in my analysis below) move in melodic N(eighbor)-motions, first in // 10s, then in contrary motion 10-°12-10 just as ♭VI begins to be tonicized and the music moves away from the “linear”/contrapuntal in function to the cadential, ultimately landing squarely on ♭VI with the authentic cadence in m.45.1.

The ALTO has a lovely (nearly complete) chromatic ascent from (local, emerging) ^5 (B♭) to ^1 (E♭) which strengthens the sense of harmonic goal (across the “pregnant pause” of the quarter-note rests in all parts) achieved in m. 43, while “heedlessly” sacrificing contrapuntal voice leading in favor of utter self-absorbed (like the young shepherdess) melody.

(Excuse the wayward stems and beamed eights in the voice; I had originally intended to show the voice part without barlines and actual rhythm, then changed my mind and forgot to adjust them.)

[wing]

Slightly on the original topic, but a divergence - when it comes to devoting precious development time to a “checker” of sorts, or with the creation of an open API allowing third-party devs, I would be FAR more interested in a practical checker around orchestration issues regarding the technical possibilities of instruments (such as a double-stop checker), in part because it can be hard to know whether or not an instrument can do something or not. It’s easy to write chords and leaps all day that seem to be ok, considering they do not light up red (so you feel safe knowing they are within the actual possible range of the instrument), but have no idea that a real player would still not be able to play it due to physical considerations of their instruments.

Obviously this would be infinitely complex and therefore impossible to cover every instrument’s nuanced complexities (and of course there is the distinction between what is possible with average players vs. advanced virtuosos), but I think something like a double-stop checker would be incredibly practical for string writing - lighting up a warning color when something is difficult or would be a stretch, advising instead for divisi; and then lighting up bright orange or something when it’s just not even a physical possibility whatsoever, no virtuoso could even do it. I feel this kind of thing could extend to writing certain trills, ornaments, and leaps that might be physically impossible on given instrument for some reason (or related to the speed of notes selected).

I understand I am dropping this in a thread unrelated to the question of Parallels, so my apologies, but my greater point is that I appreciate the idea that the devs are considering routes and an open API to explore the possibility of tools such as these.

[judddanby]

Interesting (and complex, indeed!) idea, @wing.

I’m agnostic about it on first glance, but I’d say it’s worth starting a new feature-request thread about it so it doesn’t get lost like an alto moving in parallel 5s with the…oh, wait…!

@wing

I understand I am dropping this in a thread unrelated to the question of Parallels, so my apologies, but my greater point is that I appreciate the idea that the devs are considering routes and an open API to explore the possibility of tools such as these.

Agreed.

[Aetherclouds]

@Mark_Johnson

since then (1982) I can’t miss it, even just reading silently. And it’s not just noticing – it feels viscerally wrong

I think yours is an interesting remark, @Mark_Johnson, which exposes a stance on parallels shared by many authoritative music educators, yet rather different from mine at a fundamental perceptual level.

What you (seem to) feel in a mostly harmonic sense - when chordal compounds shift statically to displaced replicas, through equal movement of every layered voice -, I tend to detect in the interplay of the contrapuntal construct.

In both cases, I think that the somehow “rougher” musical quality of parallelisms reveals itself when the phenomenon repeats, outlining a mirrored pattern between parts that appears to flatten the spaciality of musical movement, in a more rigid plane devoid of intervallic volume, if I can attempt this metaphor.

I never felt that parallel fifths, which I sense as having a certain “electrical” brilliance to them, were musically wrong, neither in aesthetic nor ethical terms, especially when they happen in a complex concertato texture between voices that interact convincingly, with appropriate contrast of movement and rhythm. More than two exposed consecutive fifths can sound elementary instead, like lacking effective voice-leading, if there are unexploited alternatives at hand, unless… the composer is legitimately after their sort of algid and archaic monumentality, for conscious expressive purposes.

The matter of parallel octaves is much more sensitive, of course (I am not talking about doublings, which are fully employable by definition). Octaves can and sometimes have to occur in large musical canvases, if they are necessary to preserve higher formal priorities, like the integrity of a thematic reprise or imitation, a crucial shape in a certain part or some harmonic content of greater importance.

Hidden parallels can be treated, in my opinion, with a much more relaxed attitude in real-world compositions for more than four parts (not tuitional exercises), providing that they not stand out in a wrong expressive way (according to style and language, of course), for example between melody and bass or a couple of voices in strong acoustic relief.

The general criterion stands (avoiding awkward movements with parallel leaps to weak acoustic intervals, in voices that obviously proceed interlocked), but its practical application, once learned its basic rationale, tends unavoidably to become very flexible.

In such a context of implied theoretical and/or stylistic reflection, I believe that a reliable on-board parallels checker would be a useful compass for autonomous orientation, for many Dorico musicians. Its use would not be to instruct the composer as to how handle himself the more or less unavoidable subject of voice-leading, but to help him/her to manage it in a technically and culturally conscious manner.

[ghellquist]

Some thoughts on a tool to flag parallell 5ths and other rule breakers.

This would probably take quite a bit of heuristics. Perhaps some trained AI could help. Developing good algorithms would probably take quite a bit of work. And as the API in Dorico currently is not quite there, I would seek a different solution.

Currently I would probably start with XML exported from Dorico. It is a format that is reasonably easy to read into a computer program. The program could output a list of suggestions as a text file. This version of the function could be a prototype, used to develop and test algorithms. When Dorico later exports a larger API I would have a lot faster development process.

[Aetherclouds]

@Derrek

As long as developing them does not take precedence over more widely needed Dorico functions.

Hi @Derrek :-), I would honestly opine that “more widely needed” could either be considered subjective or user-group related.

For good or worse, an electronic engraving software is more than a purely technical tool aimed at publishers and the media industry, especially if still evolving and relatively new to the block like Dorico. Hence, there are functions with prevailing pedagogical or theoretical implications that sooner or later will need to be implemented, for the app to stand out from the competition.

[Peter_McAleer]

I can point you to at least one example of Bach writing parallel 7ths