#8 - What is Prolongation in Music?

FOR Advanced Students

One of my most cherished professors, Dr. Chadwick Jenkins, has repeated the same word in almost every lesson, multiple times: Prolongation! If so, what is Prolongation, and why is it an important concept to understand in music performance?

I typically explain the idea of prolongation in the following way: you live in your house. It’s nice living in your house, where you can unwind, read, spend time with loved ones – but it is likely that you wouldn’t want to stay there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What do you do instead? You would go buy groceries, take a stroll around the block to get some fresh air, go over to your neighbor’s to catch up; or maybe you go to work in a different town, go to a party or meet friends for lunch. Or! Maybe you take a vacation abroad for a few weeks! Each one of these experiences enrich your life, gives it meaning and makes it interesting - but you always come back home.

Each one of these examples could be compared to how music works. If a song had the same one harmony, with the same rhythm, and a melody that doesn’t move at all, it will likely be a boring experience. But once one starts to move between harmonies, vary the rhythm and the melody – all of these create interest, or “a time away from home” that makes the return back home that much more satisfying.

Once we recognize the prolongation in a given piece of music, a harmonic progression becomes one unit – therefore, reducing the many notes to fewer meaningful objects that we can then relate to in a simpler manner. In one piece of music, we can find multiple such units, and then make sense of how all these units work together to create one sensible structure that then guides our performance in a deep and meaningful way.

As this blog post is aimed toward the more advanced musician, it presupposes experience in harmonic and melodic analysis. If you are not yet familiar with this, don’t fret! I will address the basics of music analysis in a future series for the intermediate student.

One of the most wonderful examples of such prolongation in music is present in J. S. Bach’s famous Prelude in C Major (BWV 846). This blog post will cover measures 1-4 to demonstrate this technique. Analysis of the rest of the piece will continue in following blog posts.

New York: G. Schirmer, 1893. Plate 11015

LESSON 1

Harmonic Reduction

1) Since Preludes are oftentimes “broken harmonies” (a.k.a. Arpeggios), the first thing we would want to do is reduce all these notes to one harmony. In this case, reducing the notes in measure one to one harmony yields C, E, G, C, E (or C, E, G after eliminating doublings), which spells out C Major. Given that we are in the key of C Major, this is the first harmonic degree (or I in Roman numerals).

2) We then continue to do the same for measures 2, 3, and 4. The results we receive are that measure two yields the harmony of C, D, A, D, F (or D, F, A, C after organizing it in root position), which spells out D Minor 7 (or ii2 in Roman numerals); measure three yields the harmony of B, D, G, D, F (or G, B, D, F in root position), which spells out G7 (or V6/5 in Roman numerals); measure four is identical to measure one (harmonic degree I), and is therefore a return to home.

3) When we put all these together, the progression we get for measures 1-4 is I-ii2-V6/5-I – an elegant modification of possibly the most standard progression in music (I-ii-V-I). Its essence is that the two middle harmonies prolong C Major! This is akin to going out to your backyard for a few minutes, before going back inside.

4) However, we are not done yet! The real beauty is revealed once we look at how the individual melodic voices move into one another. The two most striking examples of this are in the soprano and the bass – let’s look at each one of them separately.

LESSON 2

Melodic Reduction

1) Before we dive into the melodic analysis, it should be explained that the individual notes (professionally referred to as scale degrees) of I (in this case, C-E-G, which are the first, third and fifth scale degrees in the key of C) are the pillars that hold the structure of the music and gives it meaning, in the same way that your house has a foundation that keeps it stable and safe, which allows you to leave it and return back to it at will. In the following two points, I will demonstrate how prolongation works by using two of these three pitches as examples.

2) The soprano line’s movement between measures 1-4 is E-F-F-E. If we reduce this to its essence, the movement is E-F-E. We can then say that F prolongs E (the third scale degree in the key of C) – we just went out to get some fresh air. This is called in professional terms “an upper neighbor” (marked with a diamond in the example below), or UN for short – a musical device that decorates the main note.

3) The bass line’s movement between measures 1-4 is C-C-B-C. If we reduce this to its essence, the movement is C-B-C. We can then say that B prolongs C (the first scale degree in the key of C). This is called in professional terms “a lower neighbor” (marked with a diamond in the example below), or LN for short.

4) A deeper look into the bass movement reveals that the C in measure two is actually a suspension (a C that is being carried over from measure one, which makes that C a consonance that turns into a dissonance). This further strengthens the case that C is a note of importance, being the tonic of this piece, and is therefore being prolonged to emphasize that importance.

5) While the other voices do make a similar movement of upper and lower neighbors, it is typically the soprano and bass notes that reveal the most of the overall intentions of the composer. That is because they form the outer barriers of the music, and are therefore also the most audible.

Lesson 3

Unit Reduction

1) When we now look at all these many notes between measures 1-4, we can now see four harmonies instead that make up one progression that its essence is one – to prolong C Major. This is our first condensed unit of meaning.

2) Note that this is not only done through “bulk harmony” (meaning, the “dry” analysis of the harmonic degrees), but rather through careful voice-leading that grants each note a special role to play in setting the whole picture.

3) When we realize this and implement this understanding into our performance, measures 1-4 all of a sudden gain depth and tension, since now the performer knows what the function of the individual notes in this progression is, and what is the intention behind it.

A Final Thought

You might be telling yourselves: “this is such dry theory, it takes away from the magic of music - why is this important for me to know?”. The answer is similar to the greatest mathematical equations: for physicists, for example, E=MC2 is not a dry mathematical equation, but rather the generating force of the sun. This is very similar in music: once the music is reduced further and further to its bare skeleton, it reveals a profound view of the composition that wouldn’t have been able to be seen otherwise - it exposes the elements and the design that makes it so beautiful.

In my mind, this is where the magic of music lies for us as performers: to know the role of the individual pitches, how to treat them with prudence and sensitivity, and be able to look at a piece of music from the bird’s-eye to understand what makes it tick, and this in turn informs the story that we want to tell when we play it, which then effects the experience of the listeners.

The audience will of course not understand most, or any of the things the performer understands and brings into their playing, but they will likely feel it. This is because this concise and coherent knowledge will turn all these many notes into small units that interact with one another in a meaningful way, and therefore tighten the performer’s playing experience in such a way that it would likely create a deeper, more meaningful experience for the listener.

In the next blog post we will explore the next unit, and continue until all units are discovered, which will then pave the way to the final analysis that will ultimately guide our performance.