Harmonic Practice In Tonal Music

Conceptually sophisticated and exceptionally musical, Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music provides a thorough treatment of harmony and voice-leading principles in tonal music.

Conceptually sophisticated and exceptionally musical, Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music provides a thorough treatment of harmony and voice-leading principles in tonal music. Taking a linear functional approach, Professor Gauldin uses clear explanations and outstanding musical examples to show students how individual chords function in the overall structure of a piece, explaining how both harmonic and melodic forces contribute to the development of musical ideas. For the Second Edition, Professor Gauldin has undertaken a comprehensive revision that responds directly to the suggestions of instructors. The new text emphasizes fundamental concepts, using a more effective organization and simpler, more accessible language to bring the most important ideas and information to the foreground.

An exploration of musical harmony from its ancient fundamentals to its most complex modern progressions, addressing how and why it resonates emotionally and spiritually in the individual. W. A. Mathieu, an accomplished author and recording artist, presents a way of learning music that reconnects modern-day musicians with the source from which music was originally generated. As the author states, "The rules of music--including counterpoint and harmony--were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies." His theory of music reconciles the ancient harmonic system of just intonation with the modern system of twelve-tone temperament. Saying that the way we think music is far from the way we do music, Mathieu explains why certain combinations of sounds are experienced by the listener as harmonious. His prose often resembles the rhythms and cadences of music itself, and his many musical examples allow readers to discover their own musical responses.

Carl Dahlhaus was without doubt the premier musicologist of the postwar generation, a giant whose recent death was mourned the world over. Translated here for the first time, this fundamental work on the development of tonality shows his complete mastery of the theory of harmony. In it Dahlhaus explains the modern concepts of harmony and tonality, reviewing in the process the important theories of Rameau, Sechter, Ftis, Riemann, and Schenker. He contrasts the familiar premises of chordal composition with the lesser known precepts of intervallic composition, the basis for polyphonic music in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Numerous quotations from theoretical treatises document how early music was driven forward not by progressions of chords but by simple progressions of intervals. Exactly when did composers transform intervallic composition into chordal composition? Modality into tonality? Dahlhaus provides extensive analyses of motets by Josquin, frottole by Cara and Tromboncino, and madrigals by Monteverdi to demonstrate how, and to what degree, such questions can be answered. In his bold speculations, in his magisterial summaries, in his command of eight centuries of music and writings on music, and in his deep understanding of European history and culture, Carl Dahlhaus sets a standard that will seldom be equalled. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"A self-contained and comprehensive college textbook, this new work provides the basis for both the one-year course in elementary harmony and the two-year course which includes advanced harmony. A new and more effective approach to this traditional music discipline has long been needed. Accordingly, Professor Forte has provided students of music with a fresh treatment of bases of harmony--one which will lead to a more effective understanding of tonal music. Tradition has by no means been minimized, but many fresh ideas replace older (and, sometimes, inadequate) ones. For example: more comprehensive ideas of harmonic structure, a schema of modulatory progression, and an uncomplicated, learnable system of chord classification are presented here for the first time. The chapters dealing with modulation and melodic structure and development shed new light on those areas. Each section is brief, well-defined, and amply illustrated with musical examples. Emphasis is placed upon composition and analysis. These essential experiences give the general music student a firm foundation in the understanding of harmony--the how as well as the why, the underlying concepts as well as the techniques for manipulating specific materials." --Dust jacket flap.

This book explores the web of pitch relations that generates the musical language of non-serialized twelve-tone music and supplies both the analytical materials and methods necessary for analyses of a vast proportion of the 20th century musical repertoire. It does so in a simple, clear, and systematic manner to promote an easily accessible and global understanding of this music. Since the chromatic scale is the primary source for the pitch materials of 20th-century music, common sub-collections of the various modes and interval cycles serve as the basis for their mutual transformation. It is precisely this peculiarity of the non-serialized twelve-tone system that allows for an array of pitch relations and modal techniques hitherto perceived difficult if not impossible to analyze. Susanni and Antokoletz present the principles, concepts, and materials employed for analysis using a unique theoretic-analytical approach to the new musical language. The book contains a large number of original analyses that explore a host of composers including Ives, Stravinsky, Bartók, Messiaen, Cage, Debussy, Copland, and many more, providing insight into the music of the tonal revolution of the twentieth century and contributing an important perspective to how music works in general.