Elgar and academicism 2: practice beyond theory

Musical Times, Autumn 2005 by Newbould, Brian

The fact is that most composers use step movement a great deal in bass lines: a scale, or part-scale, in the bass can add valuable coherence and can in fact stimulate harmonic inventiveness. Scale-basses abound in Mozart and Beethoven. If, next time we hear what has now become known as Bach's 'Air on the G string' (the Air from the Suite no. 2 in D) we focus our ears on the bass line, we will hear that first long melody note underpinned by a steady descent down the scale in the bass. We will in fact count ten steps (two of them ascending, the rest descending) before we hear a leap. We may safely use the term 'step' in this discussion to denote either a tone or a semitone (sometimes called 'half-step'), since the distinction - real enough in a musical sense - is not strictly germane to our present argument. If we continue to listen with an ear for such statistics, we will find that in the whole piece there are 23 leaps in the bass, and 56 steps.

This ratio of step to leap may not be wholly typical of Baroque music, but it still obtains in certain Baroque contexts. The chaconne-bass of the time typically begins by descending from the tonic (whether in whole- or halfsteps). What is likely to arrest this stepwise progress is the need to form a cadence: leaps are generally felt to be necessary to provide the decisive articulation that best performs the cadential function. (The standard strong cadence-bass is crystallised in the cliché which terminates the typical recitative in early opera and oratorio.) The variations-on-a-ground that make up Dido's Lament in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas may be said to comprise so many overlapping cycles of seven-steps-plus-two-leaps, the leaps breaking into the chain of steps close to the fourth-bar cadence.

What are the particular virtues of stepwise or scalewise motion in a bass line? A bass line tends to stand in relief because it is, like the top line, an exterior face of the texture, 'covered ' by other parts on only one side (above). That Baroque notational habit we call continuo or figured bass tended to acknowledge this situation: the composer provided the textural 'frame ' - the bottom part and the top part or upper group - leaving the keyboardist to improvise the filling. A purposeful linear thrust in the bass, strong on directionality, is all the more beneficial, accordingly. It is widely agreed among musical cognoscenti that the most natural form of melodic movement is by step.1 We may venture to add that steps are the easiest intervals to perceive, in that they are the easiest for a singer to pitch, for the inner ear to imagine, and for the listener to recognise. It may be to this very fact that a certain unwritten 'law' is owed: this law prefers that melodic notes dissonant to the prevailing harmony should be resolved by step. (The second melody note of Handel's 'Largo' -Ombra mai fu' from the opera Xerxes - is dissonant with the chord supporting it, and resolves by falling a step.) But this principle is itself a particular recommendation for the use of step movement in a bass. At the beginning of the 'Air on the G string' the bass initially falls from the tonic to the leading-note, forming a dissonance as the upper harmony remains unchanged. The continuation of the bass down by a further step constitutes what is virtually a de rigueur resolution of that dissonance. Used thus, a stepwise bass affords ready opportunities for dissonance; and this is a positive gain, in that dissonance is an energising force in music - energising because it strongly implies forward movement to an expected resolution.