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Introduction to the Course
A Feeling for Harmony is a three volume work written to coincide with the three-semester music theory program at Earlham College. It covers Western music theory from the earliest beginnings in ancient Indo-European philosophy through the study of common practice tonality and into the major trends of the 20th and 21st centuries. While rooted in the so-called “Classical” tradition of Europe and America, it also embraces the world of jazz, blues and rock whenever possible.
Volume I: Introduction and Foundations elucidates the essential grammar of western musical theory and also touches upon the philosophical and aesthetic/emotional underpinnings of this grammar. Its goal is to impart to the student a feeling for harmony and to provide a knowledge base for not only how western music functions, but why it functions, based on a long history of cultural assumptions.
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Table of Contents
WRITTEN
ASSIGNMENT PAGE 2011
PRACTICA MUSICA ASSIGNMENT PAGE
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Chapter 1: Review of Foundational Materials
1A Pitch
1B Staff Symmetry and Note Names
1C Meter and Rhythm
1D Metric Examples
1E Pentatonic Scales
1F Pentatonic Tunes
1G Basic Intervals
1H Simple Key Signatures
Chapter 2: Nada Brahma and the Harmony of the Spheres
2A Ancient Concepts of Sound and Vibration
2B The Legend of Pythagoras
2C Renaissance Concepts of Sound
and Vibration
2D Classical Concepts of
Sound and Vibration
2E Modern Concepts of Sound and Vibration
Chapter 3: Musical Ratios, Intervals and Harmonic Polarity
3A Pythagorean Ratios and Intervals
3B Pythagorean Scales, the
Pythagorean Comma and Modern Music
3C Just Intonation
3D Harmonic Series
3E Tunings and Commas
Chapter 4: Modes, Scales and Melody
4A Pentatonic Scales, revisited
4B Modal thinking: Raga and Chant
4C The 6 modes of Western music
4D Polarity and the Central Spine
4E Modes in Modern Practice
4F Beginning 2-part Counterpoint
4G Further Instructions on Writing Counterpoint
4G Writing a Modal Canon
4H 3-part Counterpoint and
the Harmonic Triad
4I Key Signatures and the Cycle
of Fifths
Chapter 5: Tonal Harmony: Hearing the Changes
5A Tonality
and Modality
5B Introduction to Harmonic Polarity
5C The Polarity
of I, IV and V (building triads)
5D The Blues
(part 1) and Harmonic Polarity
5E Relative Major/Minor Scales
and the names of the steps
5F Singing with Solfege
5G Building Triads
on Scale Degrees
5H Expanded Harmonic Polarity
5I Dominant Seventh Chords, Part 1
5J Musical Examples
5K Deeper Meaning
of Harmonic Polarity
5L
Dominant Seventh Chords, Part 2
5M Diminished Triads
and Sevenths. Major and Minor Seventh Chords
5N Major and Minor
Chord Progressions
5O The Blues (part 2) and Dominant Seventh Chords
5P The Three Essential Chord
Progressions in Major
5Q The Three Essential Chord
Progressions in Minor
5R More Musical Examples
Chapter 6: Introduction to Traditional Part writing
6A Chord Voicings and Chord Inversions
6B Analyzing Chorales
6C The Figured Bass
6D Figured Bass and Chord
Inversions
6E Basic Chord Voicing and Doubling
6F Principles of Voice
Leading I
6G Embellishing Tones
Chapter 7: Putting it Together
7A Popular Forms
7B Folk and dance forms
7C
Introduction to Symphonic Form (Beethoven's 5th Symphony)