Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

—
68 RESOLUTION RESOLUTION
sonanoe is irritant, and eajinot be indefinitely
'dwelt upon by the mind, but while it is heard
the return to consonance is awaited. To conduct
this return to consonance in such a manner that
the connection between the chords may be intelligible
to the hearer is the problem of resolution.
The history of the development of harmonic
music shows that the separate idea of resolution
in the abstract need not have been present to
the earliest composers who introduced discords
into their works. They discovered circumstances
in which the flow of the parts, moving in consonance
with one another, might be diversified
by retarding one part while the others moved on
a step, and then waited for that which was left
behind to catch them up. This process did not
invariably produce dissonance, but it did conduce
to variety in the independent motion of the
parts. The result, in the end, was to establish
the class of discords we call suspensions, and
their resolutions were inevitably implied by the
very principle on which the device is founded.
Thus when Josquin diversified a simple succession
of chords in what we call their first position,
as follows-—
Ex. 1.
-Ji
J—!
A d
P
1-
ESE Ei S^a^E
A
as by substituting (6) for (a) in Ex. 2.
Bx. 2.
(a) I, ^ Of)
I ,
This complicated matters, and gave scope for
fresh progressions and combinations, but it did
not necessarily affect the question of resolution,
pure and simple, because the destination of the
part causing the dissonance was still predetermined.
However, the gradually increasing frequency
of the use of discords must have habituated
hearers to their effect and to the consideration
of the characteristics of different groups, and so
by degrees to their classification. The first
marked step in this direction was the use of the
Dominant seventh without preparation, which
showed at least a thorough appreciation of the
fact that some discords might have a more independent
individuality than others. This appears
at first merely in the occasional discarding
of the formality of delaying the note out of
a preceding chord in order to introduce the
dissonance ; but it led also towards the consideration
of resolution in the abstract, and ultimately
to greater latitude in the process of returning to
consonance. Both their instinct and the particular
manner in which the aspects of discords
presented themselves at first led the earlier composers
to pass from a discordant note to the
nearest available note in the scale, wherever the
nature of the retardation did not obviously imply
the contrary ; and this came by degrees to be
accepted as a tolerably general rule. Thus the
Dominantseventhisgenerally found to resolve on
the semitone below ; and this, combined with the
fact that theleading note was already in the chord
with the seventh, guided them to the relation of
Dominant and Tonic chords ; although theyearly
realised the possibility of resolving on other harmony
than that of the Tonic, on special occasions,
without violating the supposed law of moving the
seventh down a semitone or tone, according to the
mode, and raising the leading note to what would
have been the Tonic on ordinary occasions. However,
the ordinary succession became by degrees so
familiar that the Tonic chord grew to be regarded
it seems sufficiently certain that no such idea as
resolving a discord was present to his mind. The
motion of D to and of to B was predetermined,
and their being retarded was mainly a
happy way of obtaining variety in the flow of the
parts, though it must not be ignored that the
early masters had a full appreciation of the following passage in a Haydn Sonata in D
actual function and eff'eot of the few discords Ex. 3.
they did employ.
Some time later the device of overlapping the
succeeding motions of the parts was discovered,
by allowing some or all of those which had gone
on in front to move again while the part which
had been left behind passed to its destination ;
as a sort of resolution in a lump of the mass of
any of the discords which were built on the top
of a Dominant major concord, as the seventh and
major or minor ninth, such as are now often
called Fundamental discords. Thus we find the
in which the Dominant seventh is not resolved
by its passing to a near degree of the scale, but
by the mass of the harmony of the Tonic followingthe
mass of the harmony of the Dominant.
Ex. 4 is an example of a similar use by him of
a Dominant major ninth.
Ex. 4. I j^
A more eoinmon way of dealing with the
resolution of such chords. wais, to make the part