Mapping Voice Leading from Four through Forty Voices- A Tool for Pedagogy

Abstract

This article describes a tool for exploring voice-leading options in pre-tonal and tonal harmonic contexts: the "voice-leading map." Like many tools, voice-leading maps may be adapted for a number of different uses and applied to a variety of materials. In order to convey something of this multivalence, the description that follows will be divided into three sections: (1) an introduction to maps using 4-voice examples, such as any student might encounter in first- and second-year theory; (2) an application of maps to 8-voice compositional exercises in a late 16th-century style; and (3) a brief exposition of the kind of analytical insights that maps afford, using a 12-voice example by Palestrina and a 40-voice example by Tallis.