Transit

Sheet music example for the musical figure Transitus : JS Bach, two-part Invention No. 4, BWV 775, bar 4f.

The transitus ( Latin for transition, passage) as a musical figure denotes passage dissonances, i.e. dissonant connecting tones between consonant sounds.

The term transitus has been in use since Christoph Bernhard . Previously used synonymous terms are commissura , symblema ( Joachim Burmeister ) and celeritas ( Athanasius Kircher , Thuringus ).

As a purely musical means of composition, the transitus does not serve to represent affects and is therefore not one of the musical-rhetorical figures. Consequently, there is no corresponding model in rhetoric: Quintilian speaks of transitus in his rhetoric, but does not mean a rhetorical figure, but rather the delightful transitions between the parts of a speech.

In the other names of the passage from Burmeister, Kircher and Thuringus mentioned above, the connection between consonant and dissonant sounds is emphasized with the individual terms. In contrast to this, Bernhard's term transitus mainly describes the way in which this connection arises: "Transitus [...] is when there is a wrong grade in the next interval between two good grades". Bernhard differentiates between three types of passage: the transitus (later transitus regularis ) as a passage dissonance on unstressed beat position , the quasi transitus (later transitus irregularis ) on a stressed beat position and the transitus inversus (later quasitransitus ) - in the style of recitativo - as contrary to the rules of transitus battered dissonance.

Remarks

1. ↑ Christoph Bernhard: Detailed report on the use of the Con- and Dissonances . Caput XII. Vom Transitu ( Edition Bernhard Lang)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  

literature

• Dietrich Bartel: Handbook of musical figures. Laaber, 1985.
• Peter Cahn: Transitus . In: Concise dictionary of musical terminology . Vol. 6, ed. by Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht and Albrecht Riethmüller , editor-in-chief Markus Bandur, Steiner, Stuttgart 1972–2006 ( online ).