Christopher:
OK, I guess we're running out of words to describe things. Perhaps I've taken the term farther than it was originally intended to go when I call any chord with the key's 4th degree and no leading tone a sub-dominant function chord. But there IS adequate support on that, including the usual replacement for the IV chord in jazz cadences: the iim7 chord. But what else to call those chords, then? They are used like subdominants, they have no leading tone, and they go nicely to a tonic-area chord. They function as pre-tonics, and quite well, too. I use them all the time, as do my students. Do they not have a name, then?
We are now in roughly the same position that composers were in ca. 1700, when the only theoretical framework available for describing music was no longer adequate for discussing current practice, and had in fact been out of date for a century. We badly need a Rameau. "Do they not have a name then?" No. Not yet, anyway.
Your position, if generalized, would lead to the conclusion that there is no harmonic motion in, say, 15th-c. fauxbourdon, or the numerous passages in Debussy of strictly parallel harmony. I'm sorry but that is nonsense.
You'll have to step me through that one, as I would conclude no such thing.
I presented a case where an (atonal) chord was played at a variety of different pitch levels. You said that in this case there was no harmonic work going on and that all that was left was rhythm. I replied by citing other instances of perfectly parallel harmony, and suggested that by your reasoning there would be no harmonic work there either. Since that is manifestly not the case, your original assertion is falsified--unless it is your claim that parallel triads do harmonic work, but parallel secundal chords do not, in wh. case I can only shrug my shoulders.
What I find most disturbing is that you seem to be claiming that all motion by fourth or fifth is inherently tonal and functional, which in turn necessarily leads to the conclusion (commonplace 100 years ago, but long since abandoned by most thinkers) that early music and world music are tonal and functional--a conclusion not in any way supported by the elaborate music-theoretical systems that the creators of these musics have used to explain what they were doing.
Huh? Where did I say that? In fact, I thought I was arguing the OPPOSITE, that harmony can be perfectly functional without dominant 7th chords resolving down by fifth, and that functional modal harmony exists with no leading tones, and that movement around the circle of fifths is not the only motion possible, and strong harmonic motion can exist with OTHER movements, in fact, even triadic harmony is not essential to hearing a key or mode.
You didn't *say* it, but it inevitably follows from your reasoning. If "functional modal harmony" exists w.o X Y or Z, then it must follow that any music in which a mode can be identified must necessarily exhibit functional harmony. But since functional harmony is a specifically modern and Western concept, its terminology clearly ought not to be applied to ancient or non-Western music. So what is there about the blues that makes it functional while, say, Josquin's _Missa Pange Linua_ is not?
-- Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press
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