Voice leading confusion

Question

I perfectly understand the theory of voice leading when explained in most theory books about moving voices between chords in the shortest possible manner to give a smooth connection between chords.

But in practice I never can see/understand the voice leading in sheet music because the chords generally are arpeggiated with melodic/motivic figures interspersed and/or chord inversions thrown in between.

Can someone explain in a logical way how voice leading works when there are a large number of notes per chord and many choices.

I do realize that one can make a "reduction" and remove non-harmonic tones but even this tends to be lacking(over simplified) in many real world cases. (specially when there is confusion in exactly which note is non-harmonic)

The way I see it is there is a much more complicated effect going on than the simple rules given in (most) theory books. The same applies to pitch resolution. e.g., most examples are extremely simplified(quarter notes in 4/4) or musical examples are chosen to "prove" the theory(i.e., the picking and choosing fallacy).

Answer 1

The rather strict rules of voice-leading as we might first be taught aren't meant to summarize the art. They are to be taken as a spring-board into a greater but harder to define understanding of music. It looks like you've had enough of those beginning exercises in simple 4-part homophonic part-writing.

Those patterns and "rules" of voice leading that we might be taught are supposed to be easier to apply and understand than the broader principles of actual practice. Composers don't always resolve tendency tones and might use more skips than your instructor would have preferred in an intro to voice leading class. But tendency tones are called tendency tones for a reason, and skips reduce our ability to hear the integrity of a voice, so they are solid concepts to understand, for example.

Most generally, voice-leading is just the way voices move about in a piece. Usually, good voice leading means that each voice feels smooth, atleast somewhat independent, at least somewhat interesting, and supportive of the background harmony and feel of the piece. Besides the standard ways we're first taught to voice-lead, it helps for voices to possess their own melodic or rhythmic aspects. You can look to contrapuntal devices. But I'm not aware of any hard-and-fast criteria.

I wouldn't be too stuck on removing "non-harmonic tones", as they are part of the actual progression of the voices (voice leading).

Let's use a phrase from Haydn's Piano Sonata in Eb (Hob XVI:49) to demonstrate some simple examples of nice voice leading (see Brendel's performance, segment ~0:35-0:47).

The blue lines connect notes in an independent voice. The green dot shows the entrance of an independent voice, while the red dot shows its exit. The orange dot shows the entrance of a voice as an entity that is largely subordinate to the top voice, and the orange lines emphasize this subordination.

Notice that on the third beat of the first seven measures the upper voice drops a step and then makes a substantial leap. This adds a feeling of unity to the voice in the phrase and adds melodic interest: nice voice leading. The step down resolves the suspension over the change in harmony on each third beat, and the jump up emphasizes the first beat of the next measure: nice voice leading. The middle voice enters on measure four to fill out the harmony to raise intensity, but also provides a bit of counter to the first voice: nice voice leading. It drops out at the end of measure five, temporarily reducing the intensity and shaping the phrases' mood. But it comes back in measure eight, and this time in a more supportive role to the first voice, really raising the intensity. In measure 9, the bass now has to get in on the escalation, doubling at the octave and rising up to meet the upper voices in a cadence. The upper voice harks back to its suspending-resolving ways of measures 1-7 by making the cadence metrically unaccented. Nice voice leading.

I'm not sure what subjective feelings of these (or any) were intended by Haydn, but the phrase sounds pretty cool to me, and it's largely due to the way he progresses the voices.

Answer 2

To properly answer your question, it would be helpful to know the context of the voice-leading you're talking about. When I refer to context, I am of course speaking about which musical period.

For example, from your question, one could infer that you are speaking about early-classical voice-leading techniques since you referenced Haydn. However, voice-leading techniques of different musical periods (most notably those that came after the classical period) have different rules that had to be expanded in order to accurately handle the expansion of harmonic language.

In addition, some composers of the late classical and early romantic period (such as Beethoven for example,) were notorious and even created their careers in part by "breaking" not only the rules of voice-leading, but also of form and convention in order to create a fresh sound that would catch listeners by surprise.

In part, I believe that you answered your own question when you talked about "resolution."

Regardless of the time period, the appropriate voice-leading techniques used are largely determined by the way the composer wants to create resolution - whether it is harmonic progression or regression. When there are many notes to choose from, you have to look at how the notes change between the chords. Once you do that, you have to think about the way the music was written at the time it was written, and then you would also be wise to compare it to other works by the same composer. This is because composers tend to have certain stylistic "fingerprints" and if you see that a particular composer is doing something a certain way and it is consistent, then that makes it easier to analyze as there is a greater likelihood that it is a convention and less of a mistake.

Lastly, it's also important to know how and what was taught for voice-leading for the given time period. Some of these composers rejected their teacher's approaches once they themselves became established composers, while others strove to master the rules to the best of their ability - most notably J.S. Bach, Handel, and Haydn just to name a few.

Those three composers were masters of counterpoint and considered by many to have brought the forms of their tradition to the highest possible degree.

As a final thought, I would recommend looking at a wider variety of sheet music for more evidence of the treatment of voice-leading. Just because a chord is presented as an arpeggio does not mean that the composer cannot have smooth voice-leading to the next arpeggiated chord.

Answer 3

Voice leading allows harmony to not just serve as series of chords but as several lines of melody that form chords between them as they move.

For example:

You can see how harmonically, the same thing is being accomplished: C to Em. However, the way the second set of C to Em is arranged to accommodate less/easiest movement as possible is a great example of voice leading.

If you want a real-life concept, think about choral music. Composers who write successfully sung/popular choral music are always aware of voice Leading. Voice leading allows singers to more successfully sing in harmony because their melodic line is easier and moves logically all at the same time.

If you are wanting an applicable instance of Voice leading, I might recommend looking into Bach's extensive use of counterpoint, which in my opinion is a more advanced version of voice leading.