Show off your theory chops with my weekly challenge! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.
This Week’s Challenge:
In this excerpt from Jules Massenet’s Vieille Chanson, what is the name of the non-harmonic tones at the red arrows?
Post your reply and come back Friday, May 6th for the answer!
ANSWER for 5/2/22
These are escape tones, also known as the échappée. They’re neighbor tones that do not return to the starting chord tone, but rather skip in the opposite direction to a new chord tone. For this reason they can also be thought of as a type of incomplete neighbor, leaping from a dissonance to a different chord tone from the one we started on. In this sense they’re the opposite of appoggiaturas, which leap to a dissonance.
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Escape tone – approached by step, resolved by leap in opposite direction.
ESP. Escape tones.