Sequentially Speaking..

The other day, my faculty mentor came up to me with a question about what made a certain piece sound so "appealing." She was referring to a piece called "Crucifixis" by Lotti. The answer to her question lies in the term "musical sequence."As most of you have probably never heard of this piece before, I will illustrate the idea of a musical sequence using a more common example.

Let's take "Angels We Have heard on High," a well known Christmas hymn.
It can be listened to here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IrGV8gG8rs

Please go to 00:25 and pay close attention. What's going on in the music when the words "Glo----ria in excelsis deo" appear??

The answer is a musical sequence. In general, a sequence is an immediate restatement of a given series of notes in a higher or lower pitch. The word "GLO--ria"is held as the music follows a downward sequential pattern.The first note of each measure within the sequence goes down by a step, from 5 to1. The first measure of the sequence starts on the 5th scale degree "GLO", the second measure starts on the 4th scale degree, the third measure starts on the 3rd scale degree, the fourth measure starts on the 2nd scale degree. Similar downward moving 8th notes transition from each of these tones to the next in the a repetitive pattern. Finally the sequence ends and we are back to the "tonic" or "first scale degree" of the key which makes you feel back at home "RIA."

The use of such a pattern is like "ear candy" to the listener, partly because such sequences tend to be "sing songy" in that they follow a very obvious pattern of expectation. If the music begins to fall in a certain pattern, we will expect it to continue falling in that pattern. However, it would be boring if an entire piece was just a long sequence because there would be no element of surprise and therefore no rewarding feeling of being able to make sense of something unexpected (see the ITPRA Theory discussed earlier).