In music, especially Schenkerian analysis, a voice exchange (german: Stimmtausch; also called voice interchange) is the repetition of a

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

passage with the voices' parts exchanged; for instance, the melody of one part appears in a second part and vice versa. It differs from

invertible counterpoint In music theory, an inversion is a type of change to intervals, chords, voices (in counterpoint), and melodies. In each of these cases, "inversion" has a distinct but related meaning. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in mu ...

in that there is no octave displacement; therefore it always involves some

voice crossing In music, voice crossing is the intersection of melodic lines in a composition, leaving a lower voice on a higher pitch than a higher voice (and vice versa). Because this can cause registral confusion and reduce the independence of the voices,Edg ...

. If scored for equal instruments or voices, it may be indistinguishable from a repeat, although because a repeat does not appear in any of the parts, it may make the music more interesting for the musicians.Donald J. Grout and Claude Palisca, ''A History of Western Music'', 5th ed., New York: Norton, 1996, 86. It is a characteristic feature of

round Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the number ...

s, although not usually called such.

Willi Apel Willi Apel (10 October 1893 – 14 March 1988) was a German-American musicologist and noted author of a number of books devoted to music. Among his most important publications are the 1944 edition of '' The Harvard Dictionary of Music'' and ''Fre ...

Harvard Dictionary of Music ''The Harvard Dictionary of Music'' is a standard music reference book published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The first edition, titled ''Harvard Dictionary of Music'', was published in 1944, and was edited by Willi Apel. ...

, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 920. Patterns of voice exchange are sometimes schematized using letters for melodic patterns.Apel, 919. A double voice exchange has the pattern: Voice 1: a b Voice 2: b a A triple exchange would thus be written: Voice 1: a b c Voice 2: c a b Voice 3: b c a The first use of the term "''Stimmtausch''" was in 1903-4 in an article by Friedrich Ludwig, while its English

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...

was first used in 1949 by Jacques Handschin.Ernest H. Sanders, "Voice Exchange," in ''

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', Staley Sadie, ed, vol. 20. London: MacMillan, 1980, 65-66. The term is also used, with a related but distinct meaning, in Schenkerian theory. "When a piece is entirely conceived according to the system of ''Stimmtausch'', it belongs to the rondellus type."

History

Voice exchange appeared in the 12th-century repertory of the

Saint Martial school The Saint Martial School was a medieval school of music composition centered in the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, France. Most active from the 9th to 12th centuries, some scholars describe its practices, music, and manuscripts as 'Aquitanian ...

as a consequence of

imitation Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our culture. ...

.Richard Hoppin, ''Medieval Music'', New York: Norton, 1978, 205. Voice exchange first became common in the

Notre Dame school The Notre-Dame school or the Notre-Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names hav ...

, who used both double and triple exchanges in

organa Organa (Alpo-Morgan) was Kubrat's maternal uncle of the Ermi clan. According to John of Nikiu, he was regent (kavkhan) over the tribe of the Onogur Bulgars from 617 to 630 in place of his nephew, Kubrat, for the time Kubrat was growing up as a ...

and

conductus The ''conductus'' (plural: ''conducti'') was a sacred Latin song in the Middle Ages, one whose poetry and music were newly composed. It is non-liturgical since its Latin lyric borrows little from previous chants. The conductus was northern Frenc ...

(in particular the wordless

cauda {{About, the musical feature The cauda is a characteristic feature of songs in the conductus style of '' a cappella'' music which flourished between the mid-12th and the mid-13th century. The conductus style placed strict rules on composition, and s ...

e). In fact,

Richard Hoppin Richard Hallowell Hoppin (February 22, 1913 – November 1, 1991) was an American musicologist. Hoppin received his BA from Carleton College in 1936 after spending two years at the Paris ''Ecole Normale de Musique''. He studied at Harvard Univ ...

regarded voice exchange as "the basic device from which the Notre Dame composers evolved ways of organizing and integrating the simultaneous melodies of polyphony,"Hoppin, 241. and of considerable importance as a means of symmetry and design in polyphonic music as well as starting point for more complex

devices. The importance was not lost on theorists of the time, either, as Johannes de Garlandia gave an example, which he called "repetitio diverse vocis," and noted in "three- and four-part organa, and conductus, and in many other things." In

Pérotin Pérotin () was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the intro ...

's four-part organum " Sederunt principes", sections that are exchanged vary considerably in length, from two to more than ten measures, and parts that are exchanged are sometimes nested (i.e. there is a brief voice exchange among two parts within a larger section which subsequently is repeated using a voice exchange). The elaborate patterns of voice exchange in pieces like "Sederunt" prove that Perotin composed them as a whole, not by successively adding voices. In the 13th century, the technique was used by English composers of the Worcester school as a structural device. In the genre rondellus, as described by the theorist Walter Odington (c. 1300), the central part of the piece was based entirely on voice exchange. Ordinarily, but not always, the text is exchanged along with the melody. It also appears in the lower parts (''pes'') of " Sumer Is Icumen In", while the upper parts always include a new melodic phrase instead of a true voice exchange. Voice exchange gradually died out after 1300, due to the gradual separation of

voice range Vocal range is the range of pitches that a human voice can phonate. A common application is within the context of singing, where it is used as a defining characteristic for classifying singing voices into voice types. It is also a topic of stu ...

s and the expansion of the

ambitus In ancient Roman law, ''ambitus'' was a crime of political corruption, mainly a candidate's attempt to influence the outcome (or direction) of an election through bribery or other forms of soft power. The Latin word ''ambitus'' is the origin ...

of a composition. However, it occasionally made limited appearances in simple polyphony of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was, for example, common in the upper parts of

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

trio sonata The trio sonata is a genre, typically consisting of several movements, with two melody instruments and basso continuo. Originating in the early 17th century, the trio sonata was a favorite chamber ensemble combination in the Baroque era. Basic s ...

Use in Schenkerian theory

Voice exchange is also used in Schenkerian analysis to refer to a

pitch class In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave positio ...

exchange involving two voices across registers, one of which is usually the bass. In this sense, it is a common secondary structural feature found in the music of a wide variety of composers. In analyses, this is represented by two crossing lines with double arrowheads indicating the exchanged pitches. A common exchange of this sort involves a progression of a third using a passing tone, the exchange notated by the interval succession 10-8-6 (if this is with the bass, the third chord is a first inversion of the first). This is in effect a

prolongation In music theory, prolongation is the process in tonal music through which a pitch, interval, or consonant triad is considered to govern spans of music when not physically sounding. It is a central principle in the music-analytic methodology o ...

of the third (generally as part of a triad), a preservation of the harmony across a time span. Another type of exchange has the interval succession 10-10-6-6 (or 6-6-10-10) and involves a pair of notes exchanged across parts.Forte and Gilbert, 113.

References

{{Schenkerian analysis Schenkerian analysis

History

Use in Schenkerian theory

See also

References