From: mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
Subject: Re: Harmonizing
Date: 23 Jan 93 13:24:47 GMT

John Ross writes:

>I wonder if some of you experienced composers could share some of your
>methods, tricks, thoughts, etc on harmonizing a melody.

The two most important decisions to be made are (a) what is making the
sounds, and (b) what the end result is supposed to sound like.

As an illustration, I would like to offer up two anthem settings I've done.
Both are in the same standard form: organ, SATB voices, series of verses
with first unison, second "normal" harmony, and then variations in
arrangement.  (Sound familiar, choir members?)

The first one used the German chooral which we know as "Savior of the
Nations Come"; it is very characteristic of its type-- square and solid.  A
typical period treatment is very thick and uses such devices as augmentation
of the melody in order to insert a very florid descant.  What I did was to
do unison on the first and last verses (with the last given a go-for-baroque
organ accompaniment), standard chorale harmony on the second and second to
last (think "A Mighty Fortress" for the usual effect), and then played with
the two inner verses.  The third verse was done over a pedal point (meaning
the organist sits one foot on a note and keeps it there), with a smallish
three part organ harmony supporting unison singing; the effect is very
blurry because the pedal point and the other harmony combine to make lots of
seventh and other augmented chords.  The fourth verse I treated quite the
opposite; it was done in strict organum (perfectly parallel motions in
fifths and octaves) with the tenors singing the third of the chord on
whatever note in the scale fell there; the organ stomped out the melody in
the pedal, with the manuals playing an arpeggio on the same notes sung by
the choir.  The whole effect is very energetic, restless, and somewhat
primitive; the verse before being restless but in a quiet and somewhat
querilous manner, the whole thing slams directly into the second to last
verse which is again very foursquare and Lutheran, thus setting everything
up for a showy organ lead in to a splashy last verse.

The other piece, "Adest Sponsus", is a late medieval advent carol, very
much in a dance form (a sort of perpetual motion 3); a typical "period"
performance would have a drone base (a pedal point as interpreted by by a
string or sackbut player) and lots of organum.  The approach I took was to
emphasize the meter, go for some organum, and play to the vocal lines.  In
this case, the first variation verse had a bass ostinato over which the
other three vocal lines sang the melody and various countermelodies; the
second variation verse modulated and evolved from a unison, through the
drone, and finished with a more or less modern chordal harmony.  The organ
basically just played along, supplied dance harmonies on the unison verse,
and glued the whole thing together.  In this era the was no virtuoso
organist as yet, at least not for this sort of piece, whereas a Lutheran
chorale cries out for one.

I hope all this long-windedness conveys some of what might go into planning
out the harmonizing.  As far as the mechanics are concerned, I generally put
in one harmony line and then try to fill in with the others, adjusting so as
to make the lines for each part singable/playable.

One of the reason why hymns tend to have such elaborate harmonies is that
singers get bored easily.  A lot of victorian hymns seem to have been
written for more or less parlor piano accompaniment and then arranged from
that to four voices; these have much less harmonic motion and as a result,
the bass line is almost always boring and either tenor or the alto is both
boring and nearly unsingable.  It's another "nature of the instrument"
thing, just like the way the piano and the guitar versions of a piece tend
to have different chords.  Pianos lend themselves to all sorts of novel
chords and placements and to lots of harmonic motion; guitars do not.  Pop
songs are written for guitars, hence....
-- 
C. Wingate        + "The peace of God, it is no peace,
                  +    but strife closed in the sod.
mangoe@cs.umd.edu +  Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing:
tove!mangoe       +    the marv'lous peace of God."
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose