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Originally Posted by Majesty
What you have is good so far. In your harmonizations below and above the inversion in measure two, beat one, I was a little surprised. But I liked it.
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OK then, I will continue and complete the harmonization of the other 2 inversions.
What surprised you? The sudden change of tonality? I've kept a smooth voice leading in the bass in the first case (F -> Eb) and a common tone in the second case (the upper C) to keep that as musical as possible. To my ear it did not sound bad, although I agree it is not something the listener can expect at this point. It can spark interest though, and the subject transition at this place is a tritone, a remarkable interval.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Majesty
How do you feel about the harmonizations you did? Eventually, I will ask you do write a fugue project. My hope is that you might take use some of the exercises as sketches or ideas. You could use the harmonization exercises as a kind of harmonic outline when leading your voices in the fugue.
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Well, I understand the aim is to write a fugue with this material, and this is only preparation... Of course I intend to use the harmonization exercises to guide me when writing the voices as counterpoint, but like I said, I did not pay too much attention to parallels when placing the various voices of these exercises, other than making sure dissonances were prepared when possible and resolve properly, and that no invalid doubling took place, but I did not pay attention to faulty parallels (the intent was to find harmonies to use whilst counterpointing, not writing 3 voices on top of the subject, right?).
So naturally, when writing the counterpoint, I will be able to use any consonant note in the harmony, not necessarily the one I've written during the harmonization. Or I may have to add an accented passing tone for imitation purposes... I have not really prepared the architecture of the fugue yet, although based on the harmonization work I've been doing, I think writing a fugue with this subject should be possible. Do you agree with that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Majesty
Also, although some don't make a big deal out of parallel or direct perfect 5ths in the inner voices, I like to have them avoided if you can.
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I've been taught in the Conservatory to avoid parallel fifths and octaves between
any two pairs of voices. So no problem here. However, for direct 5ths and octaves, we were taught to only avoid them between
outer voices. The rationale being that these are actually causing "hidden" parallel 5ths and that those are very difficult to spot if they occur between the inner voices. I can try to avoid them though, but since I'm not used to do so, I may not spot them whilst writing, and fixing that after the fact can be tough.