Talk:Common practice period

Refers to

If you must say "refers to", then you're writing about the phrase rather than using the phrase to write about what it refers to. In that case, italicize it. But "refers to" is usually better avoided, since "is" is much simpler. Michael Hardy 23:55, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I appreciate your advice on grammar, but I feel uncomfortable uncritically stating that, "the Common Practice Period is," well, anything. Unlike the moon, which is, "the largest satellite of the Earth," the Common Practice Period is made up. Anyway to address this without horrid grammar? Hyacinth 01:41, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How about "The common practice period in music history is the era 1600-1900" (or whatever) or "is an amalgam formed from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods" ? --Tdent 21:35, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Anacrustic

'Anacrustic' is indeed a valid word, appearing in the Oxford Dictionary which cites Gerard Manley Hopkins' use of it in 1878 in a letter to Robert Bridges; deriving directly from ανακρουστικος its invention cannot properly be called a 'barbarous'. Stumps 08:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes Stumps: it is precisely because of that august dictionary's acceptance of the word, and its impeccable classical pedigree, that I retracted my animadversion in the very next edit summary (qv). All the same, the article plunges very suddenly into obscurity after some very lucid lead material, don't you think? It could certainly be made more friendly to non-expert readers. – Noetica 11:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Uh, what lucid beginning was that? Sorry, my initial impression was total incomprehension of the entire piece. It's "defined" as a time period with no reference to the hallmarks of the music it supposedly encompasses. It goes downhill from there. Dlw20070716 (talk) 21:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Confusing

This concept of cpp is irrelevant and misleading

How so? Hyacinth (talk) 00:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

It is irrelevant and misleading because it is obviously absurd. Is there anybody (except perhaps Walter Piston) who can actually believe, composers of European art music from Monteverdi to Debussy and Strauss (1600-1900) had for 300 years done nothing more than restricting themselves to using diatonic scales (Since the late 1500s there were chromatic and enharmonic scales besides.) and repeating conventional patterns like the cadence I IV V I? In fact, your article may be taken as description of most trivial styles of pop music, but the approach of composers of art music was absolutely different. In order to verify this, it should be sufficient to take some scores and look into them. You will find that the chord sequence I V IV I was frequently used and much, much more besides. By the way, the "19th century", as period of music history, is most commonly presumed as to have ended with world war I.80.144.74.112 (talk) 08:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The "common practice" of this period did not begin or end overnight, so it is not surprising to find exceptions at both the beginning and the end. Nevertheless, with very rare exceptions the basic vocabulary of chords and the rules of voice leading do not differ much, if at all, for all composers for at least two and a half centuries. However I agree that the examples in the text are weak; they could well be omitted without harm to the article. Fenneck (talk) 15:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Even this position is adventurous enough. In order to verify it, it would be your task to give a precise uniform theory for the music of 1600 to 1900, i.e. for the music of composers such as Monteverdi, Schütz, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Debussy and many others besides. In current musicology nobody who wants to be taken seriously dares to claim that he had found such kind of a uniform music theory. (If someone did it and then came with nothing more than the chord sequence I-IV-V-I, the only reaction would be a hell of laughing.) So, if you’d create a uniform music theory, it would be original research. From my own impression the connotation "common practice period" has much resemblance with the claim, mice and crocodiles must be regarded as same kinds of animals since both have two eyes, four legs and a tail. From the perspective of the Wikipedia rules, the term "common practice period" is just a peacock term.

When in 1941 Walter Piston created the term "common practice period" he apparently meant, a new period with a new kind of practice had begun. Calling prior styles "common practice" was then polemical, since no creative artists wants to be regarded as "common". Should the connotation "common practice period" have been meant with meaning of making use of tonality, the situation would be even worse, since in the 20th century there were of course huge quantities of tonal art music by Strauss, Mahler, Reger, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith, Britten, Schostakowitch, Prokoview and many others. Besides there were tonal styles of jazz and pop. Then claiming, the music of the 20th century was as main part atonal, would be an absurdity.

In comparison with Walter Piston we are in a better position since his future is our past. So, we can look back. During the 1950s there were the experiments of the "Serialists" who with very big words claimed that from now on all music had to be of serial style. All this was gone when around 1960 the period of the "Chaotists" had begun. Since "composing" with "aleatoric" and "fluxus" is a thing that without any education everybody can do (Just go to a piano and sit down on the keys.), this was not a higlight, but the deepest point ever reached in European music history. In the second half of the 1970s there were new approaches of tonality. Most prominent representative of this development was Karlheinz Stockhausen. While in the 1960s he had "improvised" with hammers and nails, in his later years he admitted that most of the rules of older tonal styles were still valid. So, the "common practice period", if one existed, had actually never ended.

In our presence the best works of J. S. Bach still give the impression of the most perfect and deepest music ever composed. The works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and all further ones of the well known "classical" masters are still alive as ever, and even works of masters of a second rank, such as Johann Strauss and Josef Lanner, are still in use. In contrast to this, the "works" of the "Serialists"and the "Chaotists", works of Walter Piston's future, are now a matter of merely historical interest. As music they are practically dead. Doesn't this show that there must have been an error in Walter Piston's view? Persons who still want to claim, "Atonality is progressive, hence good, while tonality is conservative, hence bad." (There are some.) are in fact the true conservatives of our days. They still adore ideas of a past which, a long time ago, already died.80.144.109.136 (talk) 10:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Those are some very, very good points. I couldn't agree more. 69.19.14.30 (talk) 05:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

"Common practice harmony is almost always derived from diatonic scales" This sentence is quite misleading and incorrect. Composers as early as the renaissance period were using chromatic alterations. In the Baroque period, the idea of a 'scale' was both unreal and non-practical. Minor keys frequently blended all three forms of the minor scale, modes, chromatic alterations and borrowed chords. Likewise, Major keys borrowed from minor and often had chromatic alterations to create stronger leading to the dominant and eventual rest on the tonic.

It would be much more sensible to say that Common practice harmony is almost always derived from a single tonal center.

As for the I IV V I/ I V IV I sequence, it was much more common to see I II V I as the II acts like a dominant to the dominant, I VI+ V I or second inversion of I(6/4) followed by dominant. I don't think the progressions are neccessary but more attractive and real cadences should be used if they must be included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.21.226.228 (talk) 23:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

References and Links

The subject matter of this article is supposed to be a period in European art music which "lasted from about 1600 until about 1900"; so why do all three of the References and the only External Link refer to sources whose primary subject matter is Twentieth-century Music? Fenneck (talk) 15:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Duration

What is the general reaction to the section called "Duration"? Specifically, can anyone present a reasonable argument why the whole thing should not be deleted as being pseudo-intellectual musicological technobabble largely irrelevant to the subject of the article? Or should it be translated into decent English first and THEN deleted as irrelevant? Fenneck (talk) 19:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

So it sounds like you're saying you don't understand it. Hyacinth (talk) 12:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Since each "duration pattern" in the list uses terms such as rhythmic units, rhythmic gestures, pulse, trills, and composite rhythms, I'd have to guess that there is actually no difference between duration and rhythm. Anything of substance in this section could be said better in the section on rhythm. Dlw20070716 (talk) 21:49, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Needs a lot of work!

I don't know much more about the "Common Practice Period" after reading this article than before, and furthermore I don't see any inline references that might enlighten me on the subject. References, please, preferably inline. And rewrite this article explaining the basics for those of us who come to the page without any musical training whatsoever. Why is it named the "common practice period"? What do the words "common" and "practice" refer to? (I gather from the article that "period" means a historical period of 300 years 1600-1900.) Who named it, and what did they think was the distinguishing characteristic (hallmark) of work in this period. I take it that it basically covers at least part of the period when classical music was in vogue. What distinguishes common practice music from classical music? Is one a subset of the other? Why is this period not called the classical period or the early modern period? I would guess that this would be the first 300 year period when even temperament would be the norm, something we all but take for granted today. But I don't see the term even temperament in your article. Surely it would have been a big deal and should be made mention of.

If you must use a lot of musical terminology like chord progression numbers and contrapuntal norms and parallel fifths and tonal vs modal, please explain yourself inline as much as possible, and not just include references to other wikipedia articles where such terms are explained. Sorry I'm being a tough critic here, but my first impression of this page was total lack of communication due to overuse of jargon and too high of an expectation of prior knowledge from the reader. Dlw20070716 (talk) 21:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

era / period

I've attempted to make the opening sentence correspond to the infoboxes in terms of the use of the words era and period. Overall, if there is agreement that musical periods make up an era then the article needs to be renamed accordingly (or, if it is the other way around, then the infoboxes need reheading).

Another consistency question is whether or not to hyphenate common practice: at the moment we have, for example, common practice music but common-practice harmony. (I favour hyphenization throughout, but am open to persuasion).

In consideration of the above points, I propose moving the article to Common-practice era, and would appreciate other users' comments. -- Picapica (talk) 04:29, 16 May 2013 (UTC)