DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

316 HARMONY HAEMONY
passage. This particular feature seems to have
been accepted as a musical fact by composers,
and appears constantly, from Monteverde till the
end of the century, among French and Italians
alike ; and it is invested with the more interest
because it is found in Lully in an improved form,
which again renewed its vitality. It stands as
follows in a Sarabande by him ;
and this form was adopted by Handel, and will be
easily recognised as familiar by those acquainted
with his works. Corelli indicates the firm
hold which this particular seventh had obtained
on the minds of musicians by using it in immediate
succession to a Dominant seventh, so that
the two intervals succeed each other in the
following manner :
in the Sonata II. of the Opera 2nda, published
in Rome, 1685. These methods of using passing
notes, anticipations, and like devices, are
extremely important, as it is on the lines thereby
indicated that progress in the harmonic department
of music is made. Many of the most prolific
sources of variety of these kinds had descended
from the contrapuntal school, and of these tlieir
immediate successors took chief advantage ; at
first with moderation, but with ever-gi-adually
increasing complexity as more insight was gained
into the opportunities they offered. Some devices
do not appear till somewhat later in the
century, and of this kind were the condensation
of the resolution of suspensions, which became
very fruitful in variety as music progressed. The
old-fashioned suspensions were merely temporary
retardations in the progression of the parts which,
taken together in their simplicity, constituted a
series of concords. Thus the succession
.^J- =J=J=
^-f=T=r
is evidently only a sophisticated version of the
succession of sixths