Palestrina.Pdf

Anonymous submission MT&A Analytical vignette 29 July 2016 HARMONIC EXTROVERSION IN THE POPE MARCELLUS MASS Scholars have long disagreed about the origin of functional tonality, situating it variously in the early 1500s (Dalza and the Frottola), the early 1600s (Monteverdi), the 1670s (Corelli), and sometime after Bach.1 To my mind, however, this is like asking for the year in which dinosaurs evolved into birds: functional harmony, like the birds, developed extremely gradually over time, and there is no single point at which the process began or ended. Instead, it seems to have appeared by the early 1500s as a limited set of ionian-mode popular-music idioms emphasizing the primary triads I, IV, and V.2 Over the next century and a half, these routines gradually colonized an ever- increasing swath of European musical practice, to the point where they started to resemble universal musical laws rather than an assortment of style-specific tendencies. While this was happening they also increased in complexity: where the simplest functionality merely emphasizes root-position I, IV, and V chords, more complex styles feature ever-longer chains of idiomatic progressions connecting tonic to dominant. Thus the supertonic becomes the primary predominant in the early 17th-century, with the vi chord being codified as a pre-predominant (i.e. chord that progresses to IV or ii rather than directly to V) only decades later. In much the same way, the I@ chord begins as a sonority that can typically be explained as “merely a suspension,” only later evolving the independence to be approached and resolved in a variety of ways. 1 Lowinsky 1961 (early 1500s), Dahlhaus 1990 and Fetis 1994 (Monteverdi), Bukofzer 1947 (Corelli), Gauldin 1995 (after Bach). 2 This paragraph summarizes [omitted for anonymity], which reports on an ongoing statistical investigation into the origins of harmonic function. My perspective is closest to that of Lowinsky, though without the teleology and more focused on specific changes (e.g. replacement of iii by I6) within the ionian mode. Unlike Bobbitt (1955) and Meeus (2000), I emphasize specific chords (I, IV, V, I6) rather than specific kinds of root motion. 2 The upshot is that sixteenth-century music is fundamentally polystylistic, offering composers a range of techniques and aesthetics unified by no overarching laws. This can be seen in the works of composers like Willaert and Goudimel, who wrote extroverted, populist, and harmonically proto-functional music, while also composing more learned contrapuntal pieces. And although it is tempting to associate tonality with secular homophony, and modality with sacred counterpoint, genre and harmony are only loosely correlated: as we will see, midcentury polyphony starts to adopt harmonic procedures from the extroverted style, such as a preference for sonorities like I, IV, V and I6; and conversely, there is plenty of homophonic music that is not strongly functional, particularly in modes other than the ionian. This, then, is the background for understanding the Pope Marcellus Mass, a paradoxical piece that is simultaneously the most famous example of 16th-century sacred polyphony, and an outlier within Palestrina’s oeuvre. It is in many ways the paradigmatic Renaissance work—best-selling, most-analyzed, universally praised—while also representing Palestrina’s closest approach to the extroverted harmony of the popular tradition. To understand it we must therefore be prepared to look from multiple angles, moving between the linear perspective in which harmonies are secondary, to a vertical approach in which chords are genuine musical objects with their own distinct tendencies.3 Personally, I find the anachronistic quality of this latter perspective to be thrilling rather than threatening: for if modern analytical tools can reveal non-obvious truths about Palestrina’s style, then this is presumably because they capture features of the composer’s implicit and untheorized musical intuitions—aspects of his musical knowledge that his contemporaries had not managed to codify. In making these about Palestrina’s harmony I am necessarily inviting a host of methodological questions, from the technical (how do we identify tonal centers, or distinguish genuine harmonies from the byproducts of nonharmonic tones?) to the philosophical (what justification is there for the application of anachronistic terminology in analysis?). Rather than discuss these in the abstract, I would instead like to consider 3 Bobbitt (1955) and Lockwood (1975) both acknowledge the importance of harmonic structure in the work, though they do not emphasize its functional qualities to the extent that I do. 3 them in the context of actual analysis. It is necessary, however, to raise a couple warning flags. The first is that all analysis is to some extent subjective and provisional, with Renaissance music presenting the same philosophical problems we confront in other styles—though perhaps to a greater degree. The second is that I adopt a minimalist understanding of familiar harmonic symbols, interpreting them simply as collections of scale degrees: thus I use “I6” to mean “the chord with scale degrees five and one above three in the bass.” The relation between this chord and “I” (the chord with scale degrees three and five above the first) is a matter for investigation rather than a presupposition embedded in the terminology. From this point of view, Roman numerals differ from figured-bass labels largely insofar as they label relative to a tonal center. Figure 1 provides my harmonic analysis of Palestrina’s opening “Kyrie.” The music is in two large parts. Measures 1–14 present the fourth-based “gap-fill” theme, which appears four times in the lowest voice, always generating some variation of the harmonic progression I–IV–I6–vii°6–I. This occurs twice in G mixolydian and twice in C ionian, though the opening’s pervasive F-naturals may tempt modern ears into hearing the passage in C.4 (This anachronistic-but-not-completely-incorrect analysis is shown on the second line.5) The second section introduces new melodic material and increases cadential energy; we begin with a series of emphatic V–I cadences yielding to a closing trio of plagal progressions. Note that the passage features a number of seventh chords which cannot be interpreted as mere byproducts of nonharmonic tones: for instance, if we were to replace the suspension G in measure 8 with its tone of resolution F , we would s create the equally problematic seventh chord A–C–E–F . Likewise, the ii# in measure 15 s 4 Jeppesen 1975 agrees with this reading of the key structure, arguing that the movement is in mixolydian for the first 8 measures and ionian thereafter. 5 Tonics and dominants are oriented oppositely in time: dominant chords can be approached freely but progress in constrained ways (typically to tonics); tonic chords, by contrast, are approached in constrained ways (typically by dominants) but progress freely. In the late sixteenth century, phrygian and mixolydian tonics start to progress in more constrained ways, typically moving by fifth to the chord that would later become the major or minor tonic. In this sense these tonics are starting to behave like dominants. This can be seen in the opening bars of Figure 1, where the mixolydian tonic G invariably moves to C. 4 would become a vii°@ if we were to replace the suspended C with its tone of resolution B.6 Since there is no obvious way to explain the seventh chords in terms of familiar nonharmonic tones, I consider them to be syntactical objects—highly constrained, of course, but nevertheless part of the music’s harmonic skeleton. On my analysis, this harmonic skeleton is both clear and broadly consistent with functional norms. Dominant (V and vii°6) chords resolve either to I or vi while IV chords typically move to I or I6. Dominant chords are preceded either by tonics, I6 chords, or pre-dominant sevenths (ii7 or ii#). There is a notable preference for I6 over iii, a chord which does not appear in the passage. Somewhat unusually for the period, root position vi act like a “pre-predominant,” proceeding either to IV or ii#, consistent with functional grammar. Of course, the music is not completely functional, particularly at the beginnings of phrases: its broadly functional outlines are periodically obscured by 6 5 progressions which move from 3 to 3 over a fixed bass—a common Renaissance idiom suppressed in functionally tonal music. I interpret these as articulating a single generalized harmonic region associated with the bass: for instance, in measures 2–3, a “generalized G chord” which can appear in the more and less stable forms G–B–D and G–B–E. (This is to reiterate the point that G–B–E should not be presumed equivalent to E–G–B in this music.) Note also the common cadential embellishment vii°6–vi6–I, found in mm. 11–12, a variant of the vii°6–IV@–I cadence familiar from the eighteenth century. To be sure, this analysis provides opportunities for disagreement. One might, for example, dispute my identification of tonal centers in the opening measures, just as one might prefer to eliminate the I6 in measure 4, treating B and D as passing tones. But is important to keep these controversies in perspective: after the first eight measures the tonal center is unequivocal (as it is throughout most of the rest of the movement), and the questionable chords, listed in parentheses in my analysis, are in the minority. Furthermore, this is a situation where the urge to avoid error can overwhelm the pursuit of truth: it is after all perfectly possible that Renaissance composers did in fact internalize 6 This is Fetis’s argument for the reality of seventh chords in Monteverdi (Fetis 1994), which works equally well for Ockeghem, Josquin, Palestrina, and virtually every other Renaissance composer.

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