Jan Templiner to Dave Lampson:

>The "craftsman" quality of the music can be judged
>objectively.  I am by no means an expert on this, and know only very
>little.  But pointing out parallel fifths or octaves in a fugue is
>something objective.  The music may be "effective", but it's badly
>written.

Not exactly.  Parallel octaves are not "forbidden" in tonal writing.
Like parallel fifths, octaves produces a srong effect that must be very
carefully employed at the classical tonal writing.  It's just a norm of
elegance and adaptation to a certain style.  They are forbidden at scholar
excercises, manily because the pupil must acquire the custom of not using
them ("limitation is strenght" etc.).  Later, one learns that those famous
rules have lots and lots of exceptions (so many that you get convinced that
it's better to simply avoid parallel octaves rather than to memorize the
jurisprudency that allows them in every case:-).

>Usually it therefore is very "ineffective", too.

Well, if you are writing a piece in the style of Palestrina, it will
be better that you don't use parallel octaves.  But try later to write
a piano piece in the style of Debussy....

Pablo Massa
[log in to unmask]