"Proper Boundaries" and the "Incoherent" Succession V(7)–IV

Apredicament awaits anyone who contemplates authoring a textbook on tonal music theory. On the one hand, a textbook should provide a clear and rational pedagogical foundation, one that stresses the order and logic essential to the formulation of tonal music. On the other hand, music is not an exact science, and there should be an acknowledgement that for every rule, there is an exception to it. The author's challenge is to achieve a balance between these opposing concerns. A textbook that places too much emphasis on unalterable edicts turns the study of tonal music into an unimaginative puzzle for which one seeks hackneyed solutions. A textbook that muddies the waters with too many unusual sidelines risks a loss of pedagogical focus and obscures the idea that coherence—not quixotic flights of artistic fancy—is at the heart of tonal composition.

Even so, deviations from the fundamental tenets of music theory are some of its most fascinating topics. Tonal composers consistently find ingenious ways to circumvent theoretical statutes while still adhering to the Mozartian dictum: "Music, even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear…."¹ Often, decisions to omit theoretical tangents from a textbook are made by its publisher rather than its author. Limitations of space prevent most monographs from delving more deeply into these matters. Consequently, authors pepper their maxims with adjectives such as "usually" and "typically" as a means of tacitly admitting there is more to the story than is being told.

Particularly for beginning students, certain regulations leave strong impressions, ones that tend to create false assumptions regarding actual tonal works. Directives such as "no parallel fifths" and "sevenths must resolve down by step" are important stepping stones toward an understanding of common-practice tonality, but these immutable pronouncements oversimplify the true situation: parallel fifths, as we know, do occur in tonal compositions (even in Bach's Chorales—the ne plus ultra of voice-leading exemplars), and sevenths occasionally resolve up by step (Vivaldi's "Autumn" Concerto from The Four Seasons, op. 8 no. 3, mvt. 3, mm. 14–21 provides a well-known example). The danger is that students interpret these prescriptions as unyielding mandates rather than significant yet flexible aesthetic guidelines. A crystallized approach to music theory robs the analytical process of a sense of freedom, discovery, and wonderment. And rigid analysis, no doubt, can lead to rigid performance.

Another notable commandment is the prohibition of V or V⁷ progressing to IV.² It has been asserted that V⁽⁷⁾–IV, characterized as "a mortal sin in harmony textbooks,"³ defies the precepts of harmonic syntax and runs "contrary to the principle of tonality."⁴ According to Shirlaw, syntactical slips are so disagreeable that "the ear will much more readily tolerate an interval slightly out of tune than a faulty harmonic progression."⁵ Conventional wisdom argues that this "retrogression" is unaesthetic and produces waywardness and confusion.⁶ Yet this is precisely how Mendelssohn begins one of his sacred choral compositions for male choir (shown in Example 1). Mendelssohn's general outlook on this apparent transgression, expressed in a letter written to his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter in 1829, differs markedly from those quoted above: "I often have to laugh, when the musicians here ask me, whether I learned according to Marpurg or Kirnberger, or perhaps might prefer Fux,…to which I answered, how I have learned, I wouldn't even know. … Cramer still maintained that I definitely must have learned from a book, for without one, wasn't it impossible? Then

Example 1.

Mendelssohn, Zwei Geistliche Choere, op. 115 no. 1, "Beati mortui," mm. 1–2

I laughed, as I said, and thought of you, and thank you, that you raised me not according to rigid, constricting theorems, but in true freedom,i.e., in the knowledge of proper boundaries."⁷ Naturally, what constitutes "proper boundaries" is partly a personal matter. Hence, tolerance for V⁽⁷⁾–IV, despite the warnings of Shirlaw and others cited above, varies from source to source. Some texts, particularly older...