Sunday, June 7, 2009

Working in some suspensions.

You'll notice that in yesterday's basic (1st species) canon, I wrote a suspension in at the juncture right before the repeat signs,

Because of this and because one of Norden's techniques of embellishment (#5 --see Thursday's post) is suspension, I worked a few more into my own embellishment.

Suspensions are pitches that begin as a consonance but are tied (or otherwise heald over) to create a dissonance when the other voice changes pitch. It then resolves down by step. This is key. Essentially, I was able to include suspensions anytime my melody descended by step --as long as I could create a dissonance by hoding that pitch over, the stepwise resolution was already "built in."

I did that in measure 2 of the dux (3 of the comes). The other suspensions are in measure 5 of the dux and 6 of the comes.

(click on image to enlarge)

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