4 ms·

The earliest tritone substitution I know of appears in Scarlatti K420 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3_NfuvK8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3_NfuvK8Y

The earliest tritone substitution I know of appears in Scarlatti K420 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3_NfuvK8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3_NfuvK8Y There are two tritones in 7-limit just intonation (7/5 and 10/7) and therefore two possible tritone substitutions. Here they're played successively http://lumma.org/music/theory/demo/progs/TritoneProgressions.mp3 http://lumma.org/music/theory/demo/progs/TritoneProgressions...

pclmulqdq 2y ago
I didn't hear that spot as a tritone substitution, personally, but a sort of non-harmonic counterpoint move ("passing tones" or "setup tones" to 19th century theorists). More broadly, a lot of people like to point out wild 20th century chords in baroque music, but they really didn't think in terms of chords, and as such these pseudo-chords don't have the same function that modern versions of chords do. In particular, Scarlatti was a prolific user of the partimento method of composition, which is a slightly of abstracted version of counterpoint, and his sonatas are pretty good examples of pieces written with this in mind. The method revolves around intervals and movement between voices rather than chords. It's normal for someone thinking in counterpoint to produce some very "modern" "chords" because that's a common consequence of following nothing but voice leading to produce a piece of music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimento https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimento See also Rick Beato mis-analyzing Bach's counterpoint as containing a very "modern" maj7#5 chord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1f_tzBx6ko&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1f_tzBx6ko&t=1s
- briffid 2y ago
  But JS Bach apparently did love those modern sounds, see BWV 542/I But indeed it doesn't make much sense to apply jazz theory on classical or early music.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I've never quite understood that POV, although my piano teacher had it. Clearly she had another way of understanding it which I'm sure is more useful. I lack that training. Pick an example everyone knows: Bach's Prelude in C. I wrote in chord symbols over every bar of that, except for that one very weird bar near the end. It helped me a lot in memorizing it.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      IMO when you're playing music, everything you want to do is on the table. If you're going to make music theory and music history arguments, you should be sensitive to the theory and history you are arguing about. By the way, a 19th century functional harmonist would also find that prelude sort of odd. Not in terms of the chords themselves, but they don't always obey their usual functions. Also, many modern players and theorists reach toward Schenkerian analysis and its derivatives to sort of explain why music sounds the ways it does. Unlike counterpoint and harmony, Schenkerian analysis is almost entirely descriptive, not prescriptive. I have no idea what your teacher would have suggested.
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        > IMO when you're playing music, everything you want to do is on the table. If you're going to make music theory and music history arguments, you should be sensitive to the theory and history you are arguing about. I don't even understand this paragraph. I'm not arguing.
        pclmulqdq 2y ago
        That wasn't directed to you, but rather toward your teacher and the OP. The intent was that as a player, I think you should go ahead and use roman numerals or jazz theory or any other form of analysis that helps you think about things. However, if you are publishing an analysis of a piece (which you did not do), you should be thinking differently than that. As someone with a significant background in historical performance, my books of Bach preludes are still full of Roman numerals because that is a really good way to "compress" information about what notes to play.
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        OK. For sure I wouldn't publish that set of chords, since anyone could create it as a shorthand. I'm actually interested in other ways of analyzing it.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    See also BWV 903 and BWV 1079. Andras Schiff playing BWV 903 (there are some REALLY bad performances of this piece out there): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs BWV 1079 wasn't necessarily written with musical instruments proscribed, but here's a good French group's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfMQ-AYiuJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfMQ-AYiuJw
    - pianoben 2y ago
      For an alternative (but still very valid) interpretation, Wanda Landowska playing BWV 903 on a harpsichord in 1935 totally blew my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-tsbumcyVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-tsbumcyVc My piano teacher pointed me to this recording when I studied the piece with him. It was scandalizing at first, but the free improvisation in the arpeggiated chords is almost miraculous. (I also love Paul Badura-Skoda's take on the piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5gojkXdeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5gojkXdeI)
- beefman 2y ago
  Scarlatti's sonatas contain many chords, apart from pure polyphony. In fact they're particularly notable for their early inroads toward functional harmony. The tritone substitution in K420 is a clear example of this. Bach much less so, and certainly not in the case highlighted by Beato there.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Whether it contains what a modern ear hears as chords or not, he wrote the piece using polyphonic methods. Bach's music also contains plenty of chords, but that doesn't change how it was written. When theorists talk about Scarlatti laying the foundation of harmony, partimento is probably the foundation they are referring to. Functional harmony of the 19th century is just a more powerful abstraction.
    - ramenbytes 2y ago
      Can you recommend any good books or resources for learning polyphonic compositional methods and/or about the other known methods?
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum is something you can find. A lot of the partimento stuff was practical in nature, and consisted of some rules and several exercises. A great online source on Partimento and historical solfege: https://partimenti.org/ https://partimenti.org/
        ramenbytes 2y ago
        Thanks!
    - tgv 2y ago
      I don't get how it depends on "how it was written." First, Bach did write chords. Bar 2 of the famous Toccata and fugue ends in a chord. Bar 10/11 has a big chord. Bar 12 starts with a chord. There are chords everywhere. In case you doubt the authorship, plenty of other toccatas have chords. The whole idea of figured bass is chords. Second, while they did think differently about harmony, you can describe it in modern terms. A description like Cmaj7 doesn't mean anything else than a set of pitches. A tritone substitution is somewhat different, since it depends on what the analyzer thinks the chord could/should have been. There's a recent YouTube video (by David Bennett, IIRC) that shows tritone substitutions in songs, but he mentions that he doubts Paul McCartney knew he was writing one. But does that mean it isn't? No, it means you can see it as a tritone substitution. Music theory is a subjective tool to describe and compare, nothing else.
jancsika 2y ago
That's a qualitatively different "tritone substitution" than what the author describes. author: spice up your jazz by simply replacing one dominant 7th chord with another a tritone away! Scarlatti: You thought I was aiming toward D-flat? Bitch, I'm surfing in G major! Your puny diatonic expectations cannot contain me. Put simply-- you can use regular expressions to try out the author's substitutions, but you'll need to build your own parser to try out Scarlatti's.
elihu 2y ago
If you think of a dominant 7th chord as four notes in a 4:5:6:7 resonance, then it seems the 7/5 interval is the "correct" tritone in this context. But a proper tritone substitution means turning the 7/5 into a 10/7 or a 10/7 into a 7/5, which means one or the other of the chords will be out of tune with itself. Alternatively, one could just hold one note fixed and move the other three, so you end up with both chords being self-consistent. That seems more mathematically satisfying at least. Ultimately, though, I suppose the only real standard of correctness in music is whatever you can get away with.
- neonscribe 2y ago
  "Whatever you can get away with" is the entire basis of equal temperament.
  - elihu 2y ago
    It is, but in just intonation it's harder to get away with certain things when the math doesn't quite work out.

pclmulqdq 2y ago

I didn't hear that spot as a tritone substitution, personally, but a sort of non-harmonic counterpoint move ("passing tones" or "setup tones" to 19th century theorists). More broadly, a lot of people like to point out wild 20th century chords in baroque music, but they really didn't think in terms of chords, and as such these pseudo-chords don't have the same function that modern versions of chords do. In particular, Scarlatti was a prolific user of the partimento method of composition, which is a slightly of abstracted version of counterpoint, and his sonatas are pretty good examples of pieces written with this in mind. The method revolves around intervals and movement between voices rather than chords. It's normal for someone thinking in counterpoint to produce some very "modern" "chords" because that's a common consequence of following nothing but voice leading to produce a piece of music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimento https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partimento See also Rick Beato mis-analyzing Bach's counterpoint as containing a very "modern" maj7#5 chord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1f_tzBx6ko&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1f_tzBx6ko&t=1s

briffid 2y ago
But JS Bach apparently did love those modern sounds, see BWV 542/I But indeed it doesn't make much sense to apply jazz theory on classical or early music.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I've never quite understood that POV, although my piano teacher had it. Clearly she had another way of understanding it which I'm sure is more useful. I lack that training. Pick an example everyone knows: Bach's Prelude in C. I wrote in chord symbols over every bar of that, except for that one very weird bar near the end. It helped me a lot in memorizing it.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    IMO when you're playing music, everything you want to do is on the table. If you're going to make music theory and music history arguments, you should be sensitive to the theory and history you are arguing about. By the way, a 19th century functional harmonist would also find that prelude sort of odd. Not in terms of the chords themselves, but they don't always obey their usual functions. Also, many modern players and theorists reach toward Schenkerian analysis and its derivatives to sort of explain why music sounds the ways it does. Unlike counterpoint and harmony, Schenkerian analysis is almost entirely descriptive, not prescriptive. I have no idea what your teacher would have suggested.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      > IMO when you're playing music, everything you want to do is on the table. If you're going to make music theory and music history arguments, you should be sensitive to the theory and history you are arguing about. I don't even understand this paragraph. I'm not arguing.
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        That wasn't directed to you, but rather toward your teacher and the OP. The intent was that as a player, I think you should go ahead and use roman numerals or jazz theory or any other form of analysis that helps you think about things. However, if you are publishing an analysis of a piece (which you did not do), you should be thinking differently than that. As someone with a significant background in historical performance, my books of Bach preludes are still full of Roman numerals because that is a really good way to "compress" information about what notes to play.
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        OK. For sure I wouldn't publish that set of chords, since anyone could create it as a shorthand. I'm actually interested in other ways of analyzing it.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  See also BWV 903 and BWV 1079. Andras Schiff playing BWV 903 (there are some REALLY bad performances of this piece out there): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs BWV 1079 wasn't necessarily written with musical instruments proscribed, but here's a good French group's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfMQ-AYiuJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfMQ-AYiuJw
  - pianoben 2y ago
    For an alternative (but still very valid) interpretation, Wanda Landowska playing BWV 903 on a harpsichord in 1935 totally blew my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-tsbumcyVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-tsbumcyVc My piano teacher pointed me to this recording when I studied the piece with him. It was scandalizing at first, but the free improvisation in the arpeggiated chords is almost miraculous. (I also love Paul Badura-Skoda's take on the piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5gojkXdeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5gojkXdeI)
beefman 2y ago
Scarlatti's sonatas contain many chords, apart from pure polyphony. In fact they're particularly notable for their early inroads toward functional harmony. The tritone substitution in K420 is a clear example of this. Bach much less so, and certainly not in the case highlighted by Beato there.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Whether it contains what a modern ear hears as chords or not, he wrote the piece using polyphonic methods. Bach's music also contains plenty of chords, but that doesn't change how it was written. When theorists talk about Scarlatti laying the foundation of harmony, partimento is probably the foundation they are referring to. Functional harmony of the 19th century is just a more powerful abstraction.
  - ramenbytes 2y ago
    Can you recommend any good books or resources for learning polyphonic compositional methods and/or about the other known methods?
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum is something you can find. A lot of the partimento stuff was practical in nature, and consisted of some rules and several exercises. A great online source on Partimento and historical solfege: https://partimenti.org/ https://partimenti.org/
      - ramenbytes 2y ago
        Thanks!
  - tgv 2y ago
    I don't get how it depends on "how it was written." First, Bach did write chords. Bar 2 of the famous Toccata and fugue ends in a chord. Bar 10/11 has a big chord. Bar 12 starts with a chord. There are chords everywhere. In case you doubt the authorship, plenty of other toccatas have chords. The whole idea of figured bass is chords. Second, while they did think differently about harmony, you can describe it in modern terms. A description like Cmaj7 doesn't mean anything else than a set of pitches. A tritone substitution is somewhat different, since it depends on what the analyzer thinks the chord could/should have been. There's a recent YouTube video (by David Bennett, IIRC) that shows tritone substitutions in songs, but he mentions that he doubts Paul McCartney knew he was writing one. But does that mean it isn't? No, it means you can see it as a tritone substitution. Music theory is a subjective tool to describe and compare, nothing else.

jancsika 2y ago

That's a qualitatively different "tritone substitution" than what the author describes. author: spice up your jazz by simply replacing one dominant 7th chord with another a tritone away! Scarlatti: You thought I was aiming toward D-flat? Bitch, I'm surfing in G major! Your puny diatonic expectations cannot contain me. Put simply-- you can use regular expressions to try out the author's substitutions, but you'll need to build your own parser to try out Scarlatti's.

elihu 2y ago

If you think of a dominant 7th chord as four notes in a 4:5:6:7 resonance, then it seems the 7/5 interval is the "correct" tritone in this context. But a proper tritone substitution means turning the 7/5 into a 10/7 or a 10/7 into a 7/5, which means one or the other of the chords will be out of tune with itself. Alternatively, one could just hold one note fixed and move the other three, so you end up with both chords being self-consistent. That seems more mathematically satisfying at least. Ultimately, though, I suppose the only real standard of correctness in music is whatever you can get away with.

neonscribe 2y ago
"Whatever you can get away with" is the entire basis of equal temperament.
- elihu 2y ago
  It is, but in just intonation it's harder to get away with certain things when the math doesn't quite work out.