26: Spacing of Chords

 

Spacing is of paramount importance, especially when writing in a Baroque chorale style. In general, the rule is quite simple: the intervals between any two neighboring voices should not be more than an octave, but an exception can be made on occasion to allow for slightly more space between the bass and the tenor.

This, for example, is a perfectly reasonably spaced A-flat chord:
A close-up of a music note AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Between the bass and the tenor, there’s a fifth; then a sixth from the tenor up to the alto, and another sixth from the alto up to the bass.

This, however, would be considered a serious spacing error: between the F# and the D in the bass and tenor, there’s a sixth, but there are almost two octaves between the tenor and alto, and exactly one between the alto and soprano.

A close-up of a music note AI-generated content may be incorrect.

There’s a practical reason for this rule: if the chord is spaced correctly (as in the first screenshot), then it feels round, full, and rich. But if there’s a huge spacing error, especially somewhere in the middle (as in the second screenshot), then it’s very easy for the ear to lose track of where it is because it got distracted processing the enormous gap caused by the mistake.

The first “real” piece of music I ever looked at judging spacing was Jakob Hintze’s hymn tune known today in English as “At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing.” Here are the first four bars of that chorale:
A close-up of a music sheet AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Notice a few things: the voices never cross each other (that’s a terrible mistake in this style, called “voice-crossing”, such that, for example, a tenor’s note, despite being a lower voice, is at any point higher than the alto’s note at the same time). The one place the octave rule of spacing is violated, it is done to prevent a crossing error, generally a worse mistake than a pure spacing error: if in bar 1 the F# sung by the bass were moved up an octave so that it was only a third away from the tenor and not a tenth, then that would require the immediately-following G (which resolves the idea started by the F#) also to move up an octave, since composers of that era really did not like having to fall a major seventh.

But, also observe that, if that were to be the case, then the imaginarily transposed G in the bass in the last beat of measure 1 would, even for half a beat, cause a crossing conflict with the F# sung in the tenor. To avoid this crossing problem (recreated and highlighted for reference below), Hintze allows himself the brief spacing violation.

In order to avoid the crossing of the tenor F# below the bass G, Hintze allows the previous beat to contain a tenth between the bass and the tenor rather than a third as in this one—and anyway, we did say we would allow very specific, occasional, justifiable breaches of the spacing rule, and a single breach to prevent a crossing is certainly specific, occasional, and justifiable enough.

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