What Do You Think, Does The "solution" Seem Too Simple To You?

Get the text by Giancarlo Bizzi: "Invisible mirrors of sounds" ... you will see that you will get a different idea of Bach

I had briefly touched upon the subject here

http://www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/930-canone-cancrizzante/

Intriguing question...

Step

http://jkant.blogspot.it/2009/02/musurgia-mirifica-composizione.html

Frank wrote:

Get the text by Giancarlo Bizzi: "Specchi invisibili dei suoni" [Invisible mirrors of sounds] ... you'll see that it will give you a different idea of Bach

What do you mean?

I have that book, I was rereading it yesterday; it isn't extremely complicated at the beginning, but it always seems to presuppose some knowledge regarding counterpoint,

in short, one always starts from an advanced level; the patterns it proposes are clear, one could already write canons or do exercises based on them,

but as soon as it uses a term in a description that, when compared to the score, makes you think something doesn't add up, the doubts begin.

Then I will explain more clearly what I mean.

Oracolo wrote:

I had briefly touched upon the subject here

http://www.pianoconc...e-cancrizzante/

Intriguing question...

This is exactly what Bach's [work] is; I tried to analyze it as I was saying, I rewrote the notes in reverse under the main line, but at some points something doesn't add up. I know I am starting from a somewhat narrow point of view given my background, but that is precisely why I was asking why—there is certainly something else underneath.

Yesterday, while reading that book, that one by Bizzi, there was the example of a canon by augmentation; studying it, he says he understood why this augmentation does not "appear"; in reality, the melodic line placed under the main one must be imagined with double values. It could be rewritten to check everything; if necessary, I will try, let's see if I find similar situations, I am talking about

harmonizations that do not contemplate "usual" degree successions.

I am not a composer, you know that, but I just wanted to emphasize the obvious: "harmonization" is the wrong term for a canon. Even now Piccinesco speaks of usual degrees; as long as he does not provide precise examples I cannot say much more, but let us remember that in counterpoint there are no "degrees," much less usual degrees.

You are right, Frank (correct me if I'm wrong), he told me a long time ago (we were talking about the fugue) that I should understand the relationship between the voices not based on the succession of degrees but on the relationship

between being, in counterpoint terms, another mess made, there is nothing to be done, my head isn't in it.

Anyway, doubts about the construction of canons remain; the procedure like the one I proposed (in the link) seems too easy to me, at this point

even I could take several themes that I have and receive canons of that type from them, maddening, it seems absurd to me.

but you know, formulas can be found everywhere. The point is that the “true” work begins immediately after, at least I believe... you could use the formula as a starting point, a way to make your first steps easier in constructing a crab canon (which is, anyway, a very particular form).

So, how to say, the trick to making them exists, but the trick to making them “correctly” does not.

I will try to do something, I have been thinking about this for a long time, I have some melodic lines that could be "exploited" in a decent way, then it's up to me (to do it well or not).

Piccinesco wrote:

in short, one always starts from an advanced level, the patterns he proposes are clear, one could already write canons, perform tests,

Perhaps a key to interpretation could be: it's not that one could write canons, Bach with those techniques has already written them...

Natan wrote:

Perhaps a way to interpret this could be: it's not that canons could be written, Bach has already written them with those techniques...

I respond: "I am not Bach, so "one could write canons" refers to me first and foremost, then to others (who shouldn't take offense), I know that Bach wrote them, I am behind the times, but not to the point

of not having seen or heard one myself; I understand the irony used, but for me, asking questions means precisely not taking it for granted that one can succeed, and above all

in what way, and with what results."

What irony, I didn't mean to be ironic... I meant to say that it is an effective methodology and stands somewhat in contrast to the romantic idea of Bach with hammer and chisel spending weeks refining sketches.

That man, on the other hand, was in a hurry; he wrote a cantata a week, had a phenomenal method, and it is well described in the indicated book.

Ok I understood.

Natan wrote:

all the romantic idea of Bach with hammer and chisel spending weeks refining canvases.

In the Romantic period, the idea of the genius is cultivated, for which there is little "craftsmanship"

For Piccinesco

By pointing out that book to you, I wanted to make you reflect on the fact that at the base of everything there is a lot of mathematics; it's no coincidence that people speak of a magic square.

You write at one point:

> what is wrong in my opinion is that such a canon should be constructed in another way, which is not easy,

The point is that with the traditionally scholastic approach (forgive the exaggeration), it would be inhuman to tackle such a test thinking of calculating all the variables in advance within the countless constraints imposed by contrapuntal structures of this magnitude.

But if you take inspiration from the book, you realize that then, basing ourselves on those patterns, with quite a bit of skill (which Bach certainly had), it is not so inhuman to use certain procedures and, above all, the procedure itself keeps you within the very constraints of the structures used (precisely by Bach himself).

A convoluted way of saying that if you seek a Bach-like result, and use his procedures, everything simplifies...

The real question is... was it really like that? It must be said that the proposed system holds up

"Anyway," I don't even have the academic approach, so I find myself in a somewhat more disadvantaged position, but (I am at the 1st chapter) the first pieces of information regarding it are clear; I still have to "look" by necessity from another direction because something is always missing, like when you read a text and don't know the meaning of a term, you can't understand everything written. In the first examples, there is talk of the magic square, its multiple "variables," and so far so good, even when he transposes everything to the use of notes and uses flourishes to make the passages less rigid; however, at one point he speaks of canon at the octave, another thing I don't know. But in the handouts the teacher gave me more than a year ago (on progressions), I read that there are ways of constructing progressions in which a canon can be formed at the 4th, the 6th, etc... for this reason, it is worth my while to deepen that discussion to see if there are other examples and then verify on Bizzi's text if I have understood certain passages correctly.

When he speaks of canon at the octave, I expect a "cell" repeated in another voice with the same interval distance between the notes used, but which ones?

Which of the 4 notes (in that case it is a diminished seventh) that constitute the diminished 7th chord in one of the voices create this canon? To someone who doesn't know these things very well, they can "slip by"; I always look like an idiot when I talk about these things because it seems like I was born yesterday, but since I am not sure about certain procedures, it is useless to say that I know them if that is not the case; maybe with more attention I will "uncover" them, but I know very well that given how I am made, all I need is something that doesn't fit "within the canons" (like when talking about exceptions: I am either instinctive or rational, I am also working on nuances and it's not a walk in the park, I mean in certain fields) and here are the doubts.

I'll give you a blatant example, with my need for certainties (which I have never had and don't have), precisely because I have crossed that "line" of demarcation between doing as I please and doing things with more awareness. When I find something that doesn't add up or doesn't make sense, I look for a reason, a logic, which sometimes isn't there; I am speaking at the level of practice, like someone who says "damn it, things are done this way, now I am faced with the same thing but proposed with variations that have no unique, academic explanation, and they lead me astray because they presuppose interpretation within the conceived structure but with very precise rules." It is the typical reaction (at least for me) of someone like me who has always done as they pleased; then, once having embraced the "method," if a term occurs, a typo in a text, an unclear definition, they go into crisis because they also intuit that it could be an error but have no one to confirm this. I know, it sounds absurd, but it happens to me, just as it happens that I overcome certain insecurities and write without then posing problems to myself that two days earlier I had set out to solve. In short, I don't take what I read for granted, and I almost ask for forgiveness for every syllable, because I look for the motivations behind everything.

Anyway, I am doing "trials" on the crab canon, "I am using two methods," which I will tell you about later; they certainly do not fall within consolidated methods, but I must try.