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In music, voice crossing is the intersection of Melodic lines in a Composition , leaving a lower voice on a higher pitch than a higher voice (and vice versa). Because this can cause Registral confusion and reduce the independence of the voices,Edgar W. Williams, Jr., ''Harmony and Voice Leading'', New York: Harper Collins, 1992, 63. it is sometimes avoided in composition and pedagogical exercises. HISTORY Voice crossing appears in , 142. As four-part music became more established by the time of Johannes Ockeghem , the top and bottom parts were less likely to cross, but the inner voices continued to cross frequently.Grout and Palisca, 164. Voice crossing appears frequently in 16th-century music, to such a degree that '' (1725), probably the most famous species counterpoint instruction book, includes an example using crossed voices early in the text.Alfred Mann, tr. ''The Study of Counterpoint''. Translated from Johann Joseph Fux, ''Gradus ad Parnassum'', New York: Norton, 1971, 36. In 18th-century contrapuntal writing, voices may cross freely, especially among voices in the same pitch location. Walter Piston, ''Counterpoint'', New York: Norton, 1947, 81. It is, however, quite restricted in Invertible Counterpoint , since it makes the crossing in the inversion impossible.Piston, 170. Canons at small harmonic intervals usually necessitate considerable voice crossing,Piston, 200. and in a Crab Canon it is inevitable at the midpoint.Piston, 210. For this reason, many authors find that canons sound better when performed by voices of different timbre.Schoeberg, 166. In four-part chorale writing, voice crossing is infrequent, and again the most frequently crossed voices are the alto and tenor.Felix Salzer and Carl Schachter, ''Counterpoint in Composition'', New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969, 266. Voice crossing is usually forbidden in pedagogical exercises in common practice chorale-style voice-leading, especially when involving an outer voice. VOICE OVERLAPPING A related phenomenon is "voice overlapping," where the voices do not cross per se, but they move together, and the lower voice passes where the upper voice was (or vice versa). For example, if two voices sound G and B, and move up to C and E. The overlapping occurs because the second note (C) in the lower voice is higher than the first note (B) in the upper voice. It leads to ambiguity, as the ear interprets the step from B to C in one voice, and is fairly consistently avoided in contrapuntal writing.Piston, 82. Voice overlaps are common in Bach chorales, but again are discouraged or forbidden by most theory texts. In keyboard works, however, voice overlapping is considered appropriate.Williams, 64. NOTES |
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