Voice exchange

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In music, especially

invertible counterpoint in that there is no octave displacement; therefore it always involves some voice crossing. If scored for equal instruments or voices, it may be indistinguishable from a repeat, although because a repeat does not appear in any of the parts, it may make the music more interesting for the musicians.[1] It is a characteristic feature of rounds, although not usually called such.[2]

Patterns of voice exchange are sometimes schematized using letters for melodic patterns.[3] A double voice exchange has the pattern: 

Voice 1:  a b
Voice 2:  b a

A triple exchange would thus be written: 

Voice 1:  a b c
Voice 2:  c a b
Voice 3:  b c a

The first use of the term "Stimmtausch" was in 1903-4 in an article by Friedrich Ludwig, while its English calque was first used in 1949 by Jacques Handschin.[4] The term is also used, with a related but distinct meaning, in Schenkerian theory.

"When a piece is entirely conceived according to the system of Stimmtausch, it belongs to the rondellus type."[5]

History

Voice exchange appeared in the 12th-century repertory of the

Notre Dame school, who used both double and triple exchanges in organa and conductus (in particular the wordless caudae).[3][7] In fact, Richard Hoppin regarded voice exchange as "the basic device from which the Notre Dame composers evolved ways of organizing and integrating the simultaneous melodies of polyphony,"[8] and of considerable importance as a means of symmetry and design in polyphonic music as well as starting point for more complex contrapuntal devices.[6] The importance was not lost on theorists of the time, either, as Johannes de Garlandia gave an example, which he called "repetitio diverse vocis," and noted in "three- and four-part organa, and conductus, and in many other things."[4]

In Pérotin's four-part organum "Sederunt principes", sections that are exchanged vary considerably in length, from two to more than ten measures,[1] and parts that are exchanged are sometimes nested (i.e. there is a brief voice exchange among two parts within a larger section which subsequently is repeated using a voice exchange).[9] The elaborate patterns of voice exchange in pieces like "Sederunt" prove that Perotin composed them as a whole, not by successively adding voices.[8]

In the 13th century, the technique was used by English composers of the

Sumer Is Icumen In", while the upper parts always include a new melodic phrase instead of a true voice exchange.[11]

Voice exchange gradually died out after 1300, due to the gradual separation of

voice ranges and the expansion of the ambitus of a composition.[4] However, it occasionally made limited appearances in simple polyphony of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was, for example, common in the upper parts of Baroque trio sonatas.[2]

Use in Schenkerian theory

Voice exchange is also used in Schenkerian analysis to refer to a pitch class exchange involving two voices across registers, one of which is usually the bass. In this sense, it is a common secondary structural feature found in the music of a wide variety of composers.[12] In analyses, this is represented by two crossing lines with double arrowheads indicating the exchanged pitches. A common exchange of this sort involves a progression of a third using a passing tone, the exchange notated by the interval succession 10-8-6 (if this is with the bass, the third chord is a first inversion of the first). This is in effect a prolongation of the third (generally as part of a triad), a preservation of the harmony across a time span.[13] Another type of exchange has the interval succession 10-10-6-6 (or 6-6-10-10) and involves a pair of notes exchanged across parts.[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Donald J. Grout and Claude Palisca, A History of Western Music, 5th ed., New York: Norton, 1996, 86.
  2. ^ a b c Willi Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 920.
  3. ^ a b Apel, 919.
  4. ^
    New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
    , Staley Sadie, ed, vol. 20. London: MacMillan, 1980, 65-66.
  5. ^ JSTOR (1929). The Musical times and singing-class circular, Volume 70, p.. Novello.
  6. ^ a b Richard Hoppin, Medieval Music, New York: Norton, 1978, 205.
  7. ^ Hoppin, 505.
  8. ^ a b Hoppin, 241.
  9. ^ Claude Palisca, ed. Norton Anthology of Western Music, vol. 1, 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1996, p. 69-70.
  10. ^ Grout and Palisca, 132.
  11. ^ Hoppin, 346.
  12. ^ Allen Forte and Steven E. Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis, New York: Norton, 1982, 110.
  13. ^ Forte and Gilbert, 111.
  14. ^ Forte and Gilbert, 113.
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