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General Principles of Harmony

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my colleague Sylvain Caron, for useful comments on the text. Thanks also to Andrew Schartmann for various suggestions concerning the writing. For those having problems with the plug-in required to hear the examples, Riccardo Distasi kindly wrote a script adding plain links for each example.

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Contents

Presentation
 

Introduction: Why this book?

  • Discussion of other approaches
  • Limits of our discussion
  • A new approach to understanding harmony

 
Basics

  • A definition of harmony
  • Intervals
  • Chords
  • Progressions

 
Principles of coherence and continuity

  • Pitch and interval limitations
  • Linear aspects: melody and bass lines; voice leading
  • An aside: open vs. closed harmonic systems
  • Hierarchy, landmarks, cadences

 
Principles of movement, interest and variety

  • General aspects of harmonic accent
  • Creating momentum and renewing interest on various structural levels
    • Locally
    • Higher Levels
  • Harmonic rhythm
  • Modulation and harmonic transition

 
Transitions between various types of harmony
 
Harmony, texture, and orchestration

  • Spacing and register
  • Doubling
  • Timbre
  • Harmony with multiple planes of tone

 
Criteria for evaluating harmony; pedagogy

 
Bibliography
 
Acknowledgements

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