Re: anti-looper bigots now OT counterpoint rules

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

Rainer Straschill wrote:
>> when I was a freshman music major studying first year theory according 
>to Paul Hindemith, we were instructed to avoid parallel fifths in all of 
>our assignments
> 
> The rule to never use parallel fifths (and octaves and primes) is much
> older than Hindemith and comes from the early Baroque era.
> 
> Now for us power chord generation people, this rule is often hard to
> understand, and so it makes sense to see where it originally came
> from:
> Back in the early Baroque era, the human voice was an important
> instrument, not only as a lead instrument, but also in multi-voice
> harmonies (as in choral harmonies). Now the predominant singing style
> at that time for solo singers was to sing jumps portamento, i.e. for a
> fifth jump from D to A not sing the D, then sing the A, but to sing a
> quick glissando from D to A.

source?

> 
> Now obviously, if several singers were doing that in a homphonic
> passage, then they all would do that glissando with a slightly
> different timing - which would mean they wouldn't be in exact
> intervals during the glissando.
> Now this sounds especially ugly if you are moving in parallel in very
> pure intervals - prime, octave and fifth - so this was to be avoided.

makes sense,
but the "sound goes thin" explanation also seems to work.
As does "harder to distinguish the voices".

The "must never expand a third to a fifth" rule doesn't get explained by
the "glissando" theory.  

andy