The beginning may trouble
him and the middle worry him--the ending invariably confounds him. The
thing ends in no key recognised by the modern ear. In the old days there
were no keys, but modes, each with its dominant, its tonic, and proper
and appropriate ending. Until comparatively recent times musicians
understood this quite well; to Purcell, and to composers much later than
him, the old endings were perfectly satisfactory. This, for instance,
left no sense of the unfinished:
[Illustration]
Gradually two keys swamped and swept away the modes--our major and
minor; then our modern feeling for key relationships was born. Here is
the major scale of C with a satisfactory harmonic ending:
[Illustration]
It will be noticed that the top note of the chord marked with a star,
the last note but one of the scale, is a semitone below the last note of
the scale and rises to the last note. That is a proper ending or full
close; what was called a half-close was:
[Illustration]
As a termination to a piece of music made up of the notes of the scale
of C, and therefore said to be in the key of C, this was not
satisfactory.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25